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Women Wage:;Earners 

THEIR PAST, THEIR PRESENT, 
AND THEIR FUTURE. 



HELEN CAMPBELL, 

AUTHOR OF "prisoners OF POVERTY," '' PRISONERS OF 

POVERTY ABROAD," "THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR," 

" MRS. HERNDON'S income," ETC. 



Wi\i\i an Cntrotmctton 
By RICHARD T. ELY, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Professor of Political Economy and Director of the School of Economics^ 
University of Wisconsin, Madison^ Wis. 




BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. j.n-^^'yV^ 
1893. ''^ ^ 



Copyright, 189S, 
By Helen Campbell. 



-f' 



1)*''' 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



0^ 



A BOOK FOR 
FRIEND, HELPER, AND COMRADE. 



INTRODUCTION 

By RICHARD T. ELY, 

Director of School of Economics, Political Science, 
AND History, University of Wisconsin, Madison. 

THE importance of the subject with which 
the present work deals cannot well be 
over-estimated. Our age may properly be called 
the Era of Woman, because everything which 
affects her receives consideration quite unknown 
in past centuries. This is well. The motive 
is twofold : First, woman is valued as never 
before ; and, second, it is perceived that the 
welfare of the other half of the human race 
depends more largely upon the position enjoyed 
by woman than was previously understood. 

The earlier agitation for an enlarged sphere 
and greater rights for woman was to a consider- 
able extent merely negative. The aim was to 
remove barriers and to open the way. It is 
characteristic of the earlier days of agitation 
for the removal of wrongs affecting any class, 



vi Introduction. 

that the questions involved appear to be simple, 
and easily repeated formulas ample to secure 
desired rights. Further agitation, however, and 
more mature reflection always show that what 
looks like a simple social problem is a complex 
one. 

"■ If women's wages are small, open new 
careers to them." As simple as this did the 
problem of women's wages once appear ; but 
when new avenues of employment were ren- 
dered accessible to women, it was found, in 
some instances, that the wages of men were 
lowered. A consequence which can be seen in 
different industrial centres is that a man and a 
wife working together secure no greater wages 
than the man alone in industries in which 
women are not employed. Now, if the result of 
opening new employments to women is to force 
all members of the family to work for the wages 
which the head of the family alone once 
received, it is manifest that we have a compli- 
cated problem. 

Another result of wage-earning by women, 
which has been observed here and there, is the 
scattering of the members of the family and the 
break-down of the home. A recent and careful 



Introduction. vii 

observer among the chief industrial centres of 
Saxony, Germany, has told us that factory 
work has there resulted in the dissolution of the 
family, and that family life, as we understand it, 
scarcely exists. We have demoralization seen 
in the young ; and in addition to that, we discover 
that the employment of married women outside 
the home results in the impaired health and 
strength of future generations. 

The conclusion by no means follows that we 
should go backward, and try to restrict the 
industrial sphere of woman. It has been well 
said that revolutions do not go backward ; we 
have to go farther forward to keep the advan- 
tages which have been attained, and at the same 
time lessen the evils which the new order has 
brought with it. 

Further action is required ; but in order that 
this action may bring desired results, it must be 
based upon ample knowledge. The natural 
impulse when we see an evil is to adopt direct 
methods looking to an immediate cure ; but such 
direct methods which at once suggest themselves 
generally fail to bring relief. The effective 
remedies are those which use indirect methods 
based upon scientific knowledge. If a sympa- 



VI 11 Introduction. 

thetic man takes to heart physical suffering, 
which he can see on every side, he must feel 
inclined to relieve the distressed at once, and feel 
impatient if he is hindered in his benevolent 
impulses ; yet we know that he will accomplish 
far more in the end, if he patiently devotes years 
to study in medical schools and practice in hos- 
pitals before he attempts to give relief to the 
diseased. We need study quite as much to cure 
the ills of the social body ; and the present work 
gives us a welcome addition to the positive 
information upon which wise action must 
depend. 

Mrs. Campbell has been favorably known for 
years on account of her valuable contributions 
to the literature of social science, and it gives 
the present writer great pleasure to have the 
privilege of introducing this book to the public 
with a word of commendation. 

Madison, Wisconsin, 
August 29, 1893. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



THE pages which follow were prepared ori- 
ginally as a prize monograph for the Ameri- 
can Economic Association, receiving an award 
from it in 1891. The restriction of the subject to a 
fixed number of words hampered the treatment, 
and it was thought best to enlarge many points 
which in the allotted space could have hardly 
more than mention. Acting on this wish, the 
monograph has been nearly doubled in size, but 
still must be counted only an imperfect sum- 
mary, since facts in these lines are in most cases 
very nearly unobtainable, and, aside from the 
few reports of Labor Bureaus, there are as yet 
almost no sources of full information. But as 
there is no existing manual of reference on this 
topic, the student of social questions will accept 
this attempt to meet the need, till more facts 
enable a fuller and better presentation of the 
difficult subject. 

New York, August, 1893. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Introduction 7 

Chapter 

I. A Look Backward 25 

II. Employments FOR Women during the 
Colonial Period, and the Develop- 
ment OF THE Factory 57 

MI. Early Aspects of Factory Labor for 

Women ^ "j"] 

IV. Rise and Growth of Trades up to 

the Present Time 95 

V. Labor Bureaus and their Work in 

RELATION TO WOMEN Ill 

VI. Present Wage-Rates in the United 

States '.,,... 126 

VII. General Conditions for English 

Workers 142 

VIII. General Conditions for Continental 

Workers 161 

IX. General Conditions among Wage- 
Earning Women in the United 
States 188 



xii Contents, 

Chapter Page 

X. General Conditions in the Western 

States 199 

XI. Specific Evils and Abuses in Fac- 
tory Life and in General Trades . 212 
XII. Remedies and Suggestions .... 249 

APPENDIX. 

Factory Inspection Law 275 

Authorities consulted in preparing this 

Book 291 

Bibliography of Woman's Labor and of the 

Woman Question , . 294 

Index 305 



WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS; 

THEIR PAST, THEIR PRESENT, AND 
THEIR FUTURE. 



INTRODUCTION. 

THE one great question that to-day agitates 
the whole civiHzed world is an economic 
question. It is not the production but the dis- 
tribution of wealth ; in other words, the wages 
question, — the wages of men and women. No- 
where do we find any suggestion that capital 
and the landlord do not receive a quid pro qtco. 
Instead, the whole labor world cries out that 
the capitalist and the landlord are enslaving 
the rest of the world, and absorbing the lion's 
share of the joint production. 

So long as it is a question of production only, 
there is perfect harmony. Both unite in agree- 
ing that to produce as much as possible is for 
the interest of each. The conflict begins with 



8 Women Wage-Earners. 

distribution. It is no longer a war of one nation 
with another; it is internecine war, destroying 
the foundations of our own defences, and making 
enemies of those who should be brothers. 

It is impossible for even the most dispassion- 
ate or indifferent observer to blink these facts. 
Proclaim as we may that there is no antagonism 
between capital and labor, — that their interests 
are one, and that conditions and opportunities 
for the worker are always better and better, — 
practical thinkers and workers deny this con- 
clusion. Wealth has enormously increased, in 
a far greater ratio than population. Does the 
laborer receive his due proportion of this in- 
crease? One must unhesitatingly answer no. 
In a country whose life began in the search for 
freedom, and which professes to give equal 
opportunity to all, more startling inequality 
exists than in any other in the civilized world. 
One of our ablest lawyers, Thomas G. Shearman, 
has lately written : — 

^' Our old equality is gone. So far from being the 
most equal people on the face of the earth, as we 
once boasted that we were, ours is now the most 
unequal of civilized nations. We talk about the 
wealth of the British aristocracy and about the pov- 



Introduction. 9 

erty of the British poor. There is not in the whole 
of Great Britain and Ireland so striking a contrast, so 
wide a chasm, between rich and poor as in these 
United States of America. There is no man in the 
whole of Great Britain and Ireland who is as wealthy 
as one of some half-a-dozen men who could be 
named in this country; and there are few there 
who could be poorer than some that could be found 
in this country. It is true that there is a larger 
number of the extremely poor in Great Britain and 
Ireland than there is in this country, but it is not 
true that there is any more desperate poverty in any 
civilized country than ours ; and it is unquestionably 
not true that there is any greater mass of riches con- 
centrated in a few hands in any country than this." 

This for America. For England the tale is 
much the same. '' The Bitter Cry of Outcast 
London," with its passionate demand that the 
rich open their eyes to see the misery, degra- 
dation, and want seething in London slums, is 
but another putting of the words of the serious, 
scientific observer of facts, Huxley himself, who 
has described an East End parish in which he 
spent some of his earliest years. Over that 
parish, he says, might have been written Dante's 
inscription over the entrance to the Inferno : 
" All hope abandon, ye who enter here." After 



lo Women Wage- Earners. 

speaking of its physical misery and its super- 
natural and perfectly astonishing deadness, he 
says that he embarked on a voyage round the 
world, and had the opportunity of seeing sav- 
age life in all conceivable conditions of savage 
degradation ; and he writes : — 

'^ I assure you I found nothing worse, nothing more 
degrading, nothing so hopeless, nothing nearly so 
intolerably dull and miserable as the life I left be- 
hind me in the East End of London. Were the 
alternative presented to me, I would deliberately 
prefer the life of the savage to that of those people 
in Christian London. Nothing would please me 
better — not even to discover a new truth — than to 
contribute toward the bettering of that state of things 
which, unless wise and benevolent men take it in 
hand, will tend to become worse, and to create some- 
thing worse than savagery, — a great Serbonian bog, 
which in the long run will swallow up the surface 
crust of civilization." 

In a year and more of continuous observa- 
tion and study of working conditions in Eng- 
land and on the Continent, some of w^hich will 
find place later, my own conclusion was the 
same. The young emperor of Germany, hot- 
headed, obstinate, and self-willed as he may be, 
IS working it would seem from as radical a con- 



1 



Introduction. 



II 



viction of deep wrong in the distributive system. 
The Berhn Labor Conference, whose chief effort 
seems to have been against child-labor and in 
favor of excluding women from the mines, or 
at least reducing hours, and forbidding certain 
of the heavier forms of labor, is but an echo of 
the great dock-strikes of London and the cry 
of all workers the world over for a better 
chance. The capitalist s^eks to hold his own, 
the laborer demands larger share of the pro- 
duct ; and how to render unto each his due is 
the great politico-economic question, — the ab- 
sorbing question of our time. 

We have found, then, that the problem is 
economic, and concerns distribution only. There 
is no complaint that the capitalist fails to secure 
his share. On the contrary, even among the 
well-to-do, deep-seated alarm is evidenced at 
the rise and progress of innumerable trusts and 
syndicates, eliminating competition, which re- 
stricts production and raises prices. They 
make their own conditions; drive from the 
field small tradesmen and petty industries, or 
absorb them on their own terms. 

Rings of every description in the political and 
the working world combine for general spolia- 



1 2 Women Wage- Earners. 

tion, and the honest worker's money jingles in 
every pocket but his own. 

Granting all that may be urged as to the 
capitalists' investment of brain-power and ac- 
quired skill, as well as of money with all the 
risks involved, they are the inactive rather than 
the active factors in production. They give of 
their store, while labor gives of its life. Their 
view is to be reconstructed, and profit-sharing 
become as much a part of any industry as 
profit-making. 

This is a growing conviction ; nor can we 
wonder that realization of its justice and its 
possibilities has been a matter of very recent 
consideration. An often repeated formula be- 
comes at last ingrained in the mental .constitu- 
tion, and any question as to its truth is a sharp 
shock to the whole structure. We have been 
so certain of the surpassing advantages of our 
own country, so certain that liberty and a 
chance were the portion of all, that to confront 
the real conditions in our great cities is to 
most as unreal as a nightmare. 

We have conceded at last, forced to it by the 
concessions of all students of our economic 
problems, that the laborer does not yet receive 



IntrodMction. 1 3 

his fair share of the world's wealth ; and the 
economic thought of the whole world is now 
devoted to the devising of means by which he 
may receive his due. There is no longer much 
question as to facts; they are only too pal- 
pable. Distribution must be reorganized, and 
haste must be made to discover how. 

It is the wages problem, then, with which we 
are to deal, — the wages of men and women ; and 
we must look at it in its largest, most universal 
aspects. We must dismiss at once any preju- 
dice born of the ignorance, incompetency, or 
untrustworthiness of many workers. Character 
is a plant cf slow growth ; and given the same 
conditions of birth, education, and general en- 
vironment it is quite possible we should have 
made no better showing. We have to-day 
three questions to be answered : — 

1. Why do men not receive a just wage? 

2. Why are women iii'^lfke caB'er^ ^ ' / 

3. Why do men receive a greater wage than 
women? 

First, Why do not men receive a greater wage 
than they do? can be answered only suggestively, 
since volumes may be and have been written 



14 Women Wage-Earners. 

on all the points involved. For skilled and 
unskilled labor alike, the differences in indus- 
trial efficiency go far toward regulating the 
wage, and have been grouped under six heads 
by General Francis A. Walker, whose volume 
on the Wages Question is a thoughtful and 
careful study of the problem from the begin- 
ning. These heads are — i. ** Peculiarities of 
stock and breeding. 2. The meagreness or 
liberality of diet. 3. Habits voluntarily or in- 
voluntarily formed respecting cleanliness of the 
person, and purity of the air and water. 4. The 
general intelligence of the laborer. 5. Tech- 
nical education and industrial environment- 
6. Cheerfulness and hopefulness in labor, grow- 
ing out of self-respect and social ambition and 
the laborer's interest in his work/' 

With this in mind, we must accept the fact 
that the value of the laborer's services to the 
employer is the net result of two elements, — one 
positive, one negative ; namely, work and waste. 
Under this head of waste come breakage, un- 
due wear and tear of implements, destruction 
or injury of materials, the cost of supervision of 
idle or blundering men, and often the hindrance 
of many by the fault of one. Modern processes 



Introduction, * 1 5 

involve so much of this order of waste that 
often there is doubt if work is worth having or 
not, and the unskilled laborer is either rejected 
or receives only a boy's wage. 

The various schools of political economists 
differ widely as to the facts which have formu- 
lated themselves in what is known as the iron 
law of wages ; this meaning that wages are said 
to tend increasingly to a minimum which will 
give but a bare living. For skilled labor the 
law may be regarded as elastic rather than iron. 
For unskilled, it is as certainly the tendency, 
which, if constantly repeated and so intensified, 
would end as law. Many standard economists 
regard it as already fixed; and writers like 
Lasalle, Proudhon, Bakumin, and Marx heap 
every denunciation upon it. 

Were the fact actually established, no words 
could be too strong or too bitter to define this 
new form of slavery. The standard of life and 
comfort affects the wages of labor, and there is 
constant effort to make the wage correspond to 
this standard. It is an unending and often 
bitter struggle, nowhere better summed up than 
by Thorold Rogers in his *' Six Centuries of 
Work and Wages,'' — a work upon which econo- 



1 6 Women Wage- Earners. 

mists, however different their conclusions, rely 
alike for facts and figures. 

We must then admit in degree the tendency 
of wages to a minimum, especially those of 
unskilled labor, and accept it as one more mo- 
tive for persistent effort to alter existing con- 
ditions and prevent any such culmination. 

Take now, in connection with the six heads 
mentioned as governing the present efficiency 
of labor, the five enumerated by Adam Smith 
in his summary of causes for differences in 
wages: i. '* The agreeableness or disagreeable- 
ness of the employments themselves. 2. The 
easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and 
expense of learning them. 3. The constancy 
or inconstancy of employment in them. 4. 
The small or great trust which must be reposed 
in those who exercise them. 5. The proba- 
bility or improbability of success in them." 

These are conditions which affect the man's 
right to large or small wage; but all of them 
presuppose that men are perfectly free to look 
over the whole industrial field and choose their 
own employment, — they presuppose the per- 
fect mobility of labor. Let us see what this 
means. 



IntrodMction . 1 7 

The theoretical mobility of labor rests upon 
the assumption that laborers of every order will 
in all ways and at all times pursue their eco- 
nomic interests ; but the actual fact is that so 
far from seeking labor under the most perfect 
conditions for obtaining it, nearly half of all 
humankind are *^ bound in fetters of race and 
speech and religion and caste, of tradition and 
habit and ignorance of the world, of poverty and 
ineptitude and inertia, which practically exclude 
them from the competitions of the world's 
industry.'' 

** Man is, of all sorts of luggage, the most 
difficult to be transported," was written by 
Adam Smith long ago; and this stands in the 
way of really free and unhampered competition. 
Mr. Frederick Harrison, one of the clearest 
thinkers of the day, has well defined the differ- 
ence between the seller and the producer of a 
commodity. He says : — 

"In most cases the seller of a commodity can 
send it or carry it from place to place, and market to 
market, with perfect ease. He need not be on the 
spot ; he generally can send a sample ; he usually 
treats by correspondence. A merchant sits in his 
counting-room, and by a few letters and forms trans- 



1 8 Women Wage-Earners ^ 

ports and distributes the subsistence of a whole city 
from continent to continent. In other cases, as the 
shopkeeper, the ebb and flow of passing multitudes 
supplies the want of locomotion for him. This is a 
true market. Here competition acts rapidly, fully, 
simply, fairly. It is totally otherwise with a day 
laborer who has no commodity to sell. He must 
himself be present at every market, which means 
costly, personal locomotion. He cannot correspond 
with his employer ; he cannot send a sample of his 
strength, nor do employers knock at his cottage 
door." 

It is plain, then, that many causes are at work 
to depress the wages even of skilled workers, 
far more than can be enumerated here. If 
this is true for men, how much more strongly 
can limitations be stated for women, as we 
ask, " Why do not women receive a better 
wage?'* Many of the reasons are historical, 
and must be considered in their origin and 
growth. Taking her as worker to-day, pre- 
cisely the same general causes are in operation 
that govern the wages of men, with the added 
disability of sex, always in the way of equal 
mobility of labor. 

Wherever for any reason there is immobility 



Introdiution. 19 

of labor, there is always lowering of the wage 
rate. ,The trades and general industries for 
which women are suited are highly localized. 
They focus in the cities and large towns, and 
women must seek them there. Great manu- 
factories drain the surrounding country; yet 
even with these opportunities an analysis of 
the industrial statistics of the United States by 
General Walker showed that the women workers 
of the country made up but seven per cent of 
the entire population. Eagerly as they seek 
work, it is far more difficult for them to obtain 
it than for men. They require to be much more 
mobile and active in their move toward the 
labor market, yet are disabled by timidity, by 
physical weakness, and by their liability to in- 
sult or outrage arising from the fact of sex. 
Men who would secure a place tramp from 
town to town, from street to street, or shop to 
shop, persisting through all rebuffs, till their 
end is accomplished. They go into suspicious 
and doubtful localities, encounter strangers, and 
sleep among casual companions. In this fash- 
ion they relieve the pressure at congested 
points, and keep the mass fluid. 

For women, save in the slight degree in- 



20 Women Wage-Earners. 

eluded in the country girl's journey to town or 
city where cotton or woollen mills offer an 
opening for work, this course is impossible. 
Ignorant, fearful, poor, and unprotected, the 
lions in her way are these very facts. Added 
to this natural disqualification, comes another, — 
in the lack of sympathy for her needs, and in 
the prejudice which hedges about all her move- 
ments. In every trade she has sought to enter, 
men have barred the way. In a speech made 
before the House of Commons in 1873, Henry 
Fawcett drew attention to the persistent resist- 
ance of men to any admission of women on the 
same terms with themselves. He said : — 

'* We cannot forget that some years ago certain trade- 
unionists in the potteries imperatively insisted that a 
certain rest for the arm which they found almost 
essential to their work should not be used by women 
engaged in the same employment. Not long since, 
the London tailors, when on a strike, having never 
admitted a woman to their union, attempted to 
coerce women from availing themselves of the re- 
munerative employment which was offered them in 
consequence of the strike. But this jealousy of 
woman's labor has not been entirely confined to 
workmen. The same feeling has extended itself 



Introduction. 2 1 

through every class of society. Last autumn a large 
number of post-office clerks objected to the employ- 
ment of women in the Post-Office." 

Driven by want, they had pressed into agri- 
cultural labor as well, and found equal opposi- 
tion there also. Mr. Fawcett in the same 
speech calls attention to the fact of the 
non-admission of women to the Agricultural 
Laborers* Union, on the ground that '' the 
agricultural laborers of the country do not 
wish to recognize the labor of women." 

There is more or less reason for such feeling. 
It arises in part from the newness of the occa- 
sion, since in the story of labor as a whole, soon 
to be considered by us in detail, it is only the 
last fifty years that have seen women taking an 
active part. We have already seen that mo- 
bility of labor is one of the first essentials, and 
that women are far more limited in this respect 
than men. 

This brings us to the final question, — Why do 
men receive a larger wage than women? The 
conditions already outlined are in part respon- 
sible, but with them is bound up another even 
more formidable. 

Custom, the law of many centuries, has so 



2 2 Women Wage- Earners. 

ingrained its thought in the constitution of men 
that it is naturally and inevitably taken for 
granted that every woman who seeks work is 
the appendage of some man, and therefore, 
partially at least, supported. Other facts bias 
the employer against the payment of the same 
wage. The girl's education is usually less 
practical than the boy's ; and as most, at least 
among the less intelligent class, regard a trade 
as a makeshift to be used as a crutch till a 
husband appears, the work involved is often 
done carelessly and with little or no interest. 
With unintelligent labor wastage is greater, 
and wages proportionately lower; and here 
we have one chief reason for the difference. 
Others will disclose themselves as we go on. 

Unskilled labor then, it is plain, must be in 
evil case, and it is unskilled laborers that are in 
the majority. For men this means pick and 
spade at such rates as may be fixed ; for women 
the needle, and its myriad forms of cheap pro- 
duction ; and within these ranks is no sense of 
real economic interest, but the fiercest and 
blindest competition among themselves. Mere 
existence is to a large extent all that is possi- 
ble, and it is fought for with a fury in strange 



Introduction. 23 

contrast to the apparent worth of the thing 
itself. 

It is this battle with which we have to do ; 
and we must go back to the dawn of the strug- 
gle, and discover what has been its course from 
the beginning, before any future outlook can 
be determined. The theoretical political eco- 
nomist settles the matter at once. Whatever 
stress of want or wrong may arise is met by 
the formula, ** law of supply and demand." If 
labor is in excess, it has simply to mobilize and 
seek fresh channels. That hard immovable 
facts are in the way, that moral difficulties face 
one at every turn, and that the ethical side of 
the problem is a matter of comparatively recent 
consideration, makes no difference. Let us dis- 
cover what show of right is on the economist's 
side, and how far present conditions are a neces- 
sity of the time. It is women on whom the facts 
weigh most heavily, and whose fortunes are most 
tangled in this web woven from the beginning of 
time, and from that beginning drenched with 
the tears and stained by the blood of workers 
in all climes and in every age. As women 
we are bound, by every law of justice, to aid 
all other women in their struggle. We are 



24 Women Wage-Earners. 

equally bound to define the nature, the neces- 
sities, and the limits of such struggle; and it 
is to this end that we seek now to discover, 
through such light as past and present may 
cast, the future for women workers the world 
over. 



\ 



A Look Backward. 25 



A LOOK BACKWARD. 

THE history of women as wage-earners is 
actually comprised within the limits of a 
few centuries; but her history as a worker runs 
much farther back, and if given in full, would 
mean the whole history of working humanity. 
The position of working women all over the 
civilized world is still affected not only by 
the traditions but by the direct injieritance of 
the past, and thus the nature of that inheritance 
must be understood before passing to any 
detailed consideration of the subject under its 
various divisions. It is the conditions under- 
lying history and rooted in the facts of human 
life itself which we must know, since from the 
beginning life and work have been practi- 
cally synonymous, and in the nature of things 
remain so. 

In the shadows of that far remote infancy of 
the world where from cave-dweller and mere 



26 Women Wage-Earners. 

predatory animal man by slow degrees moved 
toward a higher development, the story of wo- 
man goes side by side with his. For neither 
is there record beyond the scattered implements 
of the stone age and the rude drawings of the 
cave-dwellers, from which one may see that 
warfare was the chief life of both. The subju- 
gation of the weaker by the stronger is the story 
of all time; the *' survival of the fittest," the 
modern summary of that struggle. 

Naturally, slavery was the first result, and 
servitude for one side the outcome of all strug- 
gle. Physical facts worked wdth man's will in 
the matter, and early rendered woman subordi- 
nate physically and dependent economically. 
The origin of this dependence is given with 
admirable force and fulness by Professor Lester 
F. Ward in his '' Dynamic Sociology " : -^ — 

In the struggle for supremacy, ** woman at 
once became property, since anything that 
affords its possessor gratification is property. 
Woman was capable of affording man the high- 
est of crratifications, and therefore became 



t3^ 



1 Dynamic Sociology, or Applied Social Science as based 
upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences. By 
Lester F. Ward, A.M., vol. i. p. 649. 



A Look Backward, 27 

property of the highest value. Marriage, under 
the prevaiHng form, became the symbol of 
transfer of ownership, in the same manner as 
the formal seizin of lands. The passage from 
sexual service to manual service on the part of 
women was perfectly natural. . . . And thus 
we find that the women of most savage tribes 
perform the manual and servile labor of the 
camp." 

** The basis of all oppression is economic 
dependence on the oppressor," is the word of 
a very keen thinker and worker in the Ger- 
man Reichstag to-day; and he adds : *' This has 
been the condition of women in the past, and it 
still is so. Woman was the first human being 
that tasted bondage. Woman was a slave 
before the slave existed." 

Science has demonstrated that in all rude 
races the size and weight of the brain differ far 
less according to sex than is the case in civilized 
nations. Physical strength is the same, with 
the advantage at times on the side of the 
woman, as in certain African tribes to-day, over 
which tribes this fact has given them the 
mastery. Primeval woman, all attainable evi- 
dence goes to show, started more nearly equal 



28 Women Wage- Earners. 

in the race, but became the inferior of man, 
when periods of child-bearing rendered her 
helpless and forced her to look to him for 
assistance, support, and protection. 

When the struggle for existence was in its 
lowest and most brutal form, and man respected 
nothing but force, the disabled member of 
society, if man, was disposed of by stab or 
blow; if woman, and valuable as breeder of 
fresh fighters, simply reduced to slavery and 
passive obedience. Marriage in any modern 
sense was unknown. A large proportion of 
female infants were killed at birth. Battle, with 
its recurring periods of flight or victory, made 
it essential that every tribe should free itself 
from all impedimenta. It was easier to capture 
women by force than to bring them up from 
infancy, and thus the childhood of the world 
meant a state in which the child had little place, 
save as a small, fierce animal, whose develop- 
ment meant only a change from infancy and its 
helplessness to boyhood and its capacity for 
fisht. 



^fc»* 



Out of this chaos of discordant elements, I 

struggling unconsciously toward social form, ' 

emerged by slow degrees the tribe and the 



A Look Backward. 29 

nation, the suggestions of institutions and laws 
and the first principles of the social state. 
Master and servant, employer and employed, 
became facts ; and dim suspicions as to economic 
laws were penetrating the minds of the early 
thinkers. The earliest coherent thought on 
economic problems comes to us from the 
Greeks, among whom economic speculation 
had begun almost a thousand years before 
Christ. The problem of w^ork and wages was 
even then forming, — the sharply accented dif- 
ference between theirs and ours lying in the 
fact that for Greek and Roman and the earlier 
peoples in the Indies economic life w^as based 
upon slavery, accepted then as the foundation 
stone of the economic social system. 

Up to the day when Greek thought on eco- 
nomic questions formulated, in Aristotle's 
'' Politics " and '^ Economics," the first logical 
statement of principles, knowledge as to actual 
conditions for women is chiefly inferential. 
When a slave, she was like other slaves, 
regarded as soulless ; and she still is, under 
Mohammedanism. As lawful wife she was 
physically restrained and repressed, and men- 
tally far more so. A Greek matron was one 



30 Wo7nen Wage- Barriers. 

degree higher than her servants ; but her own 
sons were her masters, to whom she owed 
obedience. A striking illustration of this is 
given in the Odyssey. Telemachus, feeling that 
he has come to man's estate, invades the ranks 
of the suitors who had for years pressed about 
Penelope, and orders her to retire to her own 
apartments, which she does in silence. Yet she 
was honored above most, passive and prompt 
obedience being one of her chief charms. 

Deep pondering brought about for Aristotle 
a view which verges toward breadth and under- 
standing, but is perpetually vitiated by the fact 
that he regards woman as in no sense an indi- 
vidual existence. If all goes well and prosper- 
ously, women deserve no credit; if ill, they may 
gain renown through their husbands, the phi- 
losopher remarking: '^Neither would Alcestis 
have gained such renown, nor Penelope have been 
deemed worthy of such praise, had they respec- 
tively lived with their husbands in prosperous 
circumstances; and it is the sufferings of 
Admetus and Ulysses which have given them 
everlasting fame." 

This is Aristotle's view of women's share in the 
life they lived ; yet gleams of som.ething higher 



A Look Backzvard, 31 

more than once came to him, and in the eighth 
chapter of the ** Economics," he adds: '^Justly 
to love her husband with reverence and respect, 
and to be loved in turn, is that which befits a 
wife of gentle birth, as to her intercourse with 
her own husband.'' Ulysses, in his address to 
Nausicaa, says : — 

" There is no fairer thing 

Than when the lord and lady with one soul 

One home possess." 

Aristotle, charmed at the picture, dilates 
on this ^^ mutual concord of husband and wife, 
. . . not the mere agreement upon servile mat- 
ters, but that which is justly and harmoniously 
based on intellect and prudence." ^ 

Side by side with this picture of a state 
known to a few only among the noblest, must 
be placed the lament of '/Iphigenia in Tauris" : 

" The condition of women is worse than that of 
all human beings. If man is favored by fortune, he 
becomes a ruler, and wins fame on the battlefield ; 
and if the gods have ordained him his fortune, he is 
the first to die a fair death among his people. But 
the joys of woman are narrowly compassed : she is 
given unasked, in marriage, by others, often to 

1 Economics, book i. chap. ix. 



32 Wome7i Wage- Earners. 

strangers ; and when she is dragged away by the 
victor through the smoking ruins, there is none to 
rescue her." 

Thucydides, who had already expressed the 
opinion quoted by many a modern Philistine, — 
" The wife who deserves the highest praise is 
she of whom one hears neither good nor evil 
outside her own house," — anticipates a later 
verdict, in words that might have been the 
foundation of Iphigenia's lament: — 

'' Woman is more evil than the storm-tossed waves, 
than the heat of fire, than the fall of the wild cata- 
ract ! If it was a god who created woman, wherever 
he may be, let him know that he is the unhappy 
author of the greatest ills." 

This was a summary of the Greek view as a 
whole. Sparta trained her girls and boys alike 
in childhood ; but the theories of Lycurgus, 
admirable at some points, were brutal and 
short-sighted at others, and Sparta demon- 
strated that the extinction of all desire for 
beauty or ease or culture brings with it as 
disastrous results as its extreme opposite. 

It is Athens that sums up the highest product 
of Greek thought, and that represents a civili- 



A Look Backward, 33 

zation which from the purely intellectual side 
has had no successor. Yet even here was 
almost absolute obtuseness and indifference, on 
the part of the aristocracy, to the intolerable 
bondage of the masses. '' The people,'' as 
spoken of by their historians and philosophers, 
mean simply a middle class, the humblest mem- 
ber of which owned at least one slave. The 
slaves themselves, the real *' masses," had no 
political or social existence more than the 
horses with which they were sent to the river 
to drink. In any scheme of political economy 
Aristotle's words, in the first book of the 
'* Politics," were the keynote : '' The science of 
the master reduces itself to knowing how to make 
use of the slave. He is the master, not because 
he is the owner of the man, but because he 
knows how to make use of his property." 

In fact, according to this chivalrous philoso- 
pher, the man was the head of the family in 
three distinct capacities ; for he says : *' Now a 
freeman governs his slave in the manner the 
male governs the female, and in another manner 
the father governs his child; and these have the 
different parts of the soul within them, but in 
a different manner. Thus a slave can have no 

3 



34 Women Wage-Earners. 

deliberative faculty; a woman but a weak one, 
a child an imperfect one/' 

That liberty could be their right appears to 
have been not even suspected. Yet out from 
these dumb masses of humanity, regarded less 
than brutes, toiling naked under summer sun 
or in winter cold, chained in mines, men and 
women alike, and when the whim came, massa- 
cred in troops, sounded at intervals a voice 
demanding the liberty denied. It was quickly 
stifled. The record is there for all to read ; 
stifled again and again, from Drimakos the 
Chian slave to Spartacus at Rome, yet each 
protest from this unknown army of martyrs 
was one step onward toward the emancipation 
to come. In each revolution, however small, 
two parties confronted each other, — the people 
who wished to live by the labor of others, the 
people who w^ished to live by their own labor, — 
the former denying in word and deed the claim 
of the latter. 

Such conditions, as we proved in our own 
experience of slavery, benumb spiritual per- 
ception and make clear vision impossible ; and 
it is plain that if the mass of workers had nei- 
ther political nor social place, woman., the slave 



A Look Backward. 35 

of the slave, had even less. Her wage had 
never been fixed. That she had right to one 
had entered no imagination. To the end of 
Greek civilization a wage remained the right of 
free labor only. The slave, save by special 
permit of the master, had right only to bare 
subsistence ; and though men and women toiled 
side by side, in mine or field or quarry, there 
was, even with the abolition of slavery, small 
betterment of the condition of women. The 
degradation of labor was so complete, even for 
the freeman, that the most pronounced aversion 
to taking a wage ruled among the entire edu- 
cated class. Plato abhorred a sophist who 
would work for wages. A gift was legitimate, 
but pay ignoble ; and the stigma of asking for 
and taking pay rested upon all labor. The 
abolition of slavery made small difTerence, for 
the taint had sunk in too deeply to be eradi- 
cated. A curse rested upon all labor ; and even 
now, after four thousand years of vacillating 
progress and retrogression, it lingers still. 

The ancients were, in the nature of things, 
all fighters. Even when slavery for both the 
Aryan and Semitic races ended, two orders still 
faced each other : aristocracy on the one side, 



36 Women Wage- Earners. 

claiming the fruits of labor; the freeman on 
the other, rebelling against injustice, and form- 
ing secret unions for his own protection, — the 
beginning of the co-operative principle in action 
Thus much for the Greek. Turn now to the 
second great civilization, the Roman. During 
the first centuries after the founding of Rome 
the Roman woman had no rights whatever, her 
condition being as abject as that of the Grecian. 
With the growth of riches and of power in the 
State, more social but still no legal freedom 
was accorded. The elder Cato complained of 
the allowing of more liberty, and urged that 
every father of a family should keep his wife 
in the proper state of servility; but in spite of 
this remonstrance, a movement for the better 
had begun. Under the Empire, woman acquired 
the right of inheritance, but she herself remained 
a minor, and could dispose of nothing without 
the consent of her guardian. Sir Henry Maine ^ 
calls attention to the institution known to the 
oldest Roman law as the *' Perpetual Tutelage 
of Women," under which a female, though 
relieved from her parent's authority by his 
decease, continues subject through life. Vari- 

1 Ancient Law, p. 147. 



A Look Backward. 37 

ous schemes were devised to enable her to 
defeat ancient rules ; and by their theory of 
" Natural Law/' the jurisconsults had evidently 
assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle 
of their code of equity/' 

Few more significant words or words more 
teeming with importance on the actual eco- 
nomic condition of women have ever been 
written than those of the great jurist whose name 
counts as almost final authority. '' Ancient 
law/' he writes, *^ subordinates the woman to 
her blood relations, while a prime phenomenon 
of modern jurisprudence has been her subordi- 
nation to her husband." Under the modified 
laws as to marriage, he goes on to state, there 
came a time ''when the situation of the Roman 
female, unmarried or married, became one of 
great personal and proprietary independence ; 
for the tendency of the later law, as already 
hinted, was to reduce the power of the guardian 
to a nullity, while the form of marriage in 
fashion conferred on the husband no comapen- 
sating superiority." 

These were the final conditions for the 
Roman, whose power, sapped by long excesses, 
was even then trembling to its fall. Already 



38 Women Wage- Earners. 

the barbarians threatened them, and at various 
points had penetrated the Empire, showing to 
the amazed Romans morals absolutely opposed 
to their own. The German races contented 
themselves with one wife; and Tacitus wrote of 
them: ''Their marriages are very strict. No 
one laughs at vice, nor is immorality regarded 
as a sign of good breeding. The young men 
marry late, — they marry equal in years and in 
health, and the strength of the parent is trans- 
mitted to the children." 

This has a rosier aspect than facts warrant. 
For the Germans, as for other barbarians of that 
epoch, the patriarchal family was the social 
order, and the head of the family the lord 
of the community. Wives, daughters, and 
daughters-in-law were excluded from leader- 
ship, though in spite of this there is record of 
a woman as being occasionally at the head of 
a tribe, — a circumstance chronicled by Tacitus 
with much disgust. 

While from the West this gigantic wave of 
powerful but uncultured life was flowing in, 
from the East had come another. Early Chris- 
tianity had already established itself, and its 
ascetic teachings made another clement in the 



A Look Backward. 39 

contradictions of the time. Up to this date 
slavery had been the foundation of society, and 
any amehoration in the condition of women 
had applied only to the patrician class. The 
Carpenter of Nazareth set his seal upon the 
sacredness of labor, and taught first not only 
the rights but the immeasurable value of even 
the weakest human soul. Women were ardent 
converts to the new gospel. Hoping with all 
the wretched for redemption and deliverance 
from present evils, they became eager and 
devoted adherents. Their missionary zeal was 
a powerful agent in the early days of Chris- 
tianity. '^ In the first enthusiasm of the Chris- 
tian movement," says Principal Donaldson, in 
his notable article on '* Women among the 
Early Christians," in the '' Fortnightly Review," 
*' women were allowed to do whatever they 
were fitted to do." 

All this within a few generations came to an 
end. Widows of sixty and over retained the 
power which had been given, and a new order 
arose, — deaconesses who were not allowed 
marriage. Neither widows nor deaconesses 
could teach, the Church being especially jealous 
in this respect and in substantial agreement 



40 Women Wage-Earners. 

with Sophocles, who said, ** Silence is a woman's 
ornament." 

Tertullian waxes furious over the thought of 
a woman learning much, and still more, ven- 
turing to use such acquirement; but heretical 
Christians insisted that the respect which 
Romans had paid to the Vestal Virgin was 
her right, and each founder of a new sect had 
some woman as helper. But as a rule, her 
highest post during the first three centuries of 
Christianity was that of doorkeeper or message- 
woman, her econonic dependence upon man 
being absolute. Social problems remained 
chiefly untouched. No objection was made 
to the existence of slavery. In this gospel of 
love the Christian slave became the brother of 
all, and kindliness w^as his right; but their 
faith demanded contentment with all present 
ills, since a glorious future was to compensate 
them. A Christian slave-woman was the prop- 
erty of her master, who had absolute power 
over her; but no objection seems to have been 
made to this. 

In the mean time many doubts as to marriage 
seem to have arisen. Paul had set his seal on 
the subjection of women, and Peter followed suit. 



A Look Backward. 41 

Antagonism to marriage grew and intensified, 
till hardly a Father of the early Church but ful- 
minated against it. Fiercest, loudest, and most 
heeded of all, the voice of Tertullian still sounds 
down the ages. This is his address to women : 

^' Do you not know that each one of you is an Eve ? 
The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in 
this age-; the guilt must of necessity live too. You 
are the devil's gateway ; you are the unsealer of 
that forbidden tree ; you are the first deserter of 
the divine law; you are she who persuaded him 
whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. 
You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On 
account of your desert, that is, death, even the Son 
of God had to die." 

Clement of Alexandria supplemented this 
verdict with one as bitter, and Cyprian and the 
rest echoed the general anathema. As marriage 
grew thus more and more degraded, the num- 
ber of the women in the world steadily increased, 
and posterity in like ratio deteriorated. The 
summary of Principal Donaldson, in the article 
already referred to, is the keynote to the whole 
situation. 

"The less spiritual classes of the people, the 
laymen, being taught that marriage might be licen- 



42 Women Wage- Earners, 

tions, and that it implied an inferior state of sanctity, 
were rather incUned to neglect matrimony for more 
loose connections ; and it was these people alone 
that then peopled the world. It was the survival of 
the unfittest. The noble men and women, on the 
other hand, who were dominated by the loftiest aspi- 
rations and exhibited the greatest temperance, self- 
control, and virtue, left no children." 

Sir Henry Maine comes to the same conclu- 
sion, and deplores the fact of the loss of liberty 
for women, adding : '' The prevalent state of 
religious sentiment may explain why it is that 
modern jurisprudence, forged in the furnace of 
barbarian conquest, and formed by the fusion 
of Roman jurisprudence with patriarchal usage, 
has absorbed among its rudiments much more 
than usual of those rules concerning the posi- 
tion of women which belong peculiarly to an 
imperfect civilization." And he adds words 
which come from a man who is a good Chris- 
tian as well as a profound student: '' No society 
which preserves any tincture of Christian insti- 
tutions is likely to restore to married women 
the personal liberty conferred on them by the 
middle Roman law." 

Passing now to the Middle Ages, we find 



A Look Backward. 43 

conditions curiously involved. The exaltation 
of celibacy as the true condition for the reli- 
gious, and the consequent enormous increase 
of convents, placed fresh barriers in the way of 
marriage ; and the Church having attracted the 
gentle and devoted among the women and the 
more intelligent among the men, the reproduc- 
tion of the species was for the most part still left 
to th(^ brutal and ignorant, thus leading to a 
survival of the unfittest to aid in any advance- 
ment of the race. 

The number of women far exceeded that of 
men, who died not onl^'^ from constant feuds 
and struggles, but from many pestilences, which 
naturally, in a day when sanitary laws were un- 
known, ravaged the country. Dr. Karl Blicher, 
commenting on the relation of this fact to the 
life of women at that time, notes that from 
1336 to 1400 thirty-two years of plague oc- 
curred, forty-two between 1400 and 1500, and 
thirty between 1500 and 1600. In addition to 
the convents, which received the well-to do, 
many towns established Bettina institutions, 
houses of God, where destitute women were 
cared for; but it was impossible for all who 
sought admittance to be provided for. 



44 Women Wage-Earners. 

The feudal system, with its absolute power 
over its serfs, had driven thousands into open 
revolt; and beggars, highwaymen, and robbers 
made life perilous and trade impossible. 

The towns banded together for protection of 
life and industry, and thus developed the guild 
of the Middle Ages, Relieved from the fear of 
free-booting barons, no less dangerous than the 
hordes of organized robbers, these guilds grew 
populous and powerful. Licentiousness did not, 
however, lessen. Luther thundered against it, 
before his own revolt came ; and the Reforma- 
tion demanded marriage as the right and privi- 
lege of a people falsely taught its debasing and 
unholy nature. 

We count the days of chivalry as the paradise 
of women. Chivalry was for the few, not the 
many; for the mass of women was still the utter 
degradation of a barbarous past, and the bur- 
den of grinding laws resulting from it. With 
the Reformation, Germany ceased to be the 
centre of European traffic ; and Spain, Portugal, 
Holland, and England took the lead in quick 
succession, England retaining it to the present 
time. German commerce and trade steadily 
declined; and as the guilds saw their impor- 



A Look Backward. 45 

tance and profits lessen, they made fresh and 
more stringent regulations against all new- 
comers. Competitors of every order were re- 
fused admission. Heavy taxes on settlement, 
costly master-examinations, limitations of every 
trade to a certain number of masters and jour- 
neymen, forced thousands into dependence from 
which there was no escape. 

Looking at the time as a whole, one sees 
clearly how old distinctions had become oblit- 
erated. Wealth found new definitions. The 
Church had made poverty the highest state, 
and insisted, as she does in part to-day, that the 
suffering and deprivation of one class were 
ordained of God to draw out the sympathies 
of the other. The rich must save their souls 
by alms and endowments, and contentment and 
acquiescence were to be the virtues of the 
poor. 

Insensibly this view was modified. Charle- 
magne, whose extraordinary personal power 
and common-sense moulded men at will, set 
an example no monarch had ever set before. 
He ordered the sale of eggs from his hens and 
the vegetables from his gardens ; and, scorn it 
as they might, his sneering nobles insensibly 



46 Women Wage-Earners. 

modified their own thought and action. Com- 
merce brought the people and products of 
new countries face to face. The lines of caste, 
as sharply defined within the labor world as 
without, were gradually dimmed or obliterated. 
The practice of credit and exchange, largely 
the creation of the persecuted Jews, made easy 
the interchange of commodities. Saint Louis 
himself organized industry, and divided the 
trades into brotherhoods, put under the protec- 
tion of the saints from the tyranny of the barons 
and of the feudal system which had weighted 
all industry. 

Reform began in the year 1257, in the ^' Insti- 
tutions" of Saint Louis, — a set of clear and defi- 
nite rules for the development of public wealth 
and the general good of the people. In their first 
joy at this escape from long-continued oppres- 
sion, many of the towns of the Middle Ages 
had admitted women to citizenship on an equal 
footing with men. In 1160 Louis le Jeune, of 
France, granted to Theci, wife of Yves, and to 
her heirs, the grand-mastership of the five 
trades of cobblers, belt-makers, sweaters, leather- 
dressers, and purse-makers. In Frankfort and 
the Silesian towns there were female furriers; 



A Look Backward, 47 

along the middle Rhine many female bakers 
were at work. Cologne and Strasburg had 
female saddlers and embroiderers of coats-of- 
arms. Frankfort had female tailors, Nurem- 
burg female tanners, and in Cologne were 
several skilled female goldsmiths. 

Twelve hundred years of struggle toward 
some sort of justice seemed likely at this point 
to be lost, for with the opening of the thirteenth 
century each and all of the guilds proceeded 
to expel every woman in the trades. It is a 
curious fact in the story of all societies approach- 
ing dissolution, that its defenders adopt the very 
means best adapted to hasten this end. Each 
corporation dreaded an increase of numbers, 
and restricted marriages, and reduced the num- 
ber of independent citizens. Many towns 
placed themselves voluntarily under the rule 
of princes who in turn were trying to subju- 
gate the nobility, and so protected the towns 
and accorded all sorts of rights and privileges. 

The Thirty Years' War, from 161 8 to 1648, de- 
cimated the German population, and reduced 
still further the possibility of marriage for many. 
Forced out of trades, women had only the low- 
est, most menial forms of trade labor as resort, 



48 Women Wage-Earners. 

and their position was to all appearance nearly- 
hopeless. 

In spite of this, certain trades were practi- 
cally woman*s. Embroidery of church vest- 
ments and hangings had been brought to the 
highest perfection. Lace-making had been 
known from the most ancient times ; and Col- 
bert, the famous financier and minister for 
Louis XIV., gave a privilege to Madame 
Gilbert, of Alengon, to introduce into France 
the manufacture of both Flemish and Venetian 
Point, and placed in her hands for the first 
expenses 150,000 francs. The manufacture 
spread over every country of Europe, though 
in 1640 the Parliament of Toulouse sought to 
drive out women from the employment, on 
the plea that the domestic were her only 
legitimate occupations. A monk came to the 
rescue, and demonstrated that spinning, weav- 
ing, and all forms of preparing and decorating 
stuff's had been hers from the beginning of 
time, and thus for a season averted further 
action. 

The monk had learned his lesson better 
than most of the workmen who sought to 
curtail woman's opportunities. In the chroni- 



A Look Backward, 49 

cles of that time there is full description of the 
workshops which formed part of every great 
estate, that known as the gyncEceiim being 
devoted to the women and children, who spun, 
wove, made up, and embroidered stuffs of every 
order. The Abbey of Niederalteich had such 
a gyncEceum, in which twenty-two women and 
children worked, while that of Stephenswert 
employed twenty- four; co-operation in such 
labor having been found more advantageous 
than isolated work. Before the tenth century 
these workshops had been established at many 
points. If part of a feudal manor, the wife of 
its lord acted often as overseer ; if attached to 
some abbey, a general overlooker filled the 
same place. In the convents manual labor 
came into favor ; and the spinning, weaving, and 
dyeing of stuffs occupied a large part of the 
life. 

Apprenticeship for both male and female 
was finally well established, and many women 
became the successful heads of prosperous in- 
dustries. The wage was, as it is to-day, the 
merest pittance; but any wage whatever was 
an advance upon the conditions of earlier 
servitude. 

4 



50 Women Wage-Earners. 

Life had small joy for women in those days 
we call the *' good old times/' Take the mar- 
ried woman, the house-mother of that period. 
She not only lived in the strictest retirement, 
but her duties were so complex and manifold 
that, to quote Bebel, '' a conscientious house- 
wife had to be at her post from early in the 
morning till late at night in order to fulfil them. 
It was not only a question of the daily house- 
hold duties that still fall to the lot of the 
middle-class housekeeper, but of many others 
from which she has been entirely freed by the 
modern development of industry, and the ex- 
tension of means of transport. She had to 
spin, weave, and bleach ; to make all the linen 
and clothes, to boil soap, to make candles and 
brew beer. In addition to these occupations, 
she frequently had to work in the field or gar- 
den and to attend to the poultry and cattle. 
In short, she was a veritable Cinderella, and 
her solitary recreation was going to church on 
Sunday. Marriages only took place within the 
same social circles ; the most rigid and absurd 
spirit of caste ruled everything, and brooked no 
transgression of its law. The daughters were 
educated on the same principles; they were 



A Look Backward. . 51 

kept in strict home seclusion ; their mental de- 
velopment was of the lowest order, and did 
not extend beyond the narrowest limits of 
household life. And all this was crowned by 
an empty and meaningless etiquette, whose 
part it was to replace mind and culture, 
and which made life altogether, and espe- 
cially that of a woman, a perfect treadmill of 
labor." 

How was it possible that a condition as 
joyless and fruitless as this should be the ac- 
cepted ideal of womanhood? Already the 
question is answered. For ages her identity 
had been merged in that of the man by whose 
side she worked with no thought of recom- 
pense. She toiled early and late, filling the 
office of general helper on the same terms; and 
even to-day, under our own eyes, the wife of 
many a farmer goes through her married life 
often not touching five dollars in cash in an 
entire year. 

Submissiveness, clinging affection, humility, 
all the traits accounted distinctively feminine, 
and the natural and ever-increasing result of 
steady suppression of all stronger ones stood 
in the way of any resistance. Intellectual quali- 



5 2 Women Wage-Earners. 

ties, forever at a discount, repressed develop- 
ment save in rarest cases. The mass of women 
had neither power nor wish to protest; and thus 
the few traces we find of their earhest connec- 
tion with labor show us that they accepted 
bare subsistence as all to which they were 
entitled, and were grateful if they escaped the 
beating which the ^lower order of Englishman 
still regards it as his right to give. Even in . 
our own country and our own time this theory 
is not altogether extinct. The papers only 
recently contained an account of the brutal 
beating of a woman by a man. The woman in 
remonstrating cried, ** You have no right to 
beat me ! I am not your wife ! " 

During the Middle Ages, and indeed well 
into the nineteenth century, possession of prop- 
erty by women was confined to the unmarried, 
the entire control and practical ownership pass- 
ing to the husband upon marriage. 

Change comes at last to even the most fos- 
silized thought. One by one, social institutions 
clung to with fiercest tenacity fell away. Bar- 
baric independence had followed Greek and 
Roman slavery, which in turn was succeeded 
by feudal servitude, to reappear once more in 



A Look Backward. 53 

the affranchised communes. Each experiment 
had its season, and sunk into the darkness of 
the past, to give place to a new one, which 
must transmit to posterity the principal and 
interest of all preceding ones. But though 
progress when taken in the mass is plain, the 
individual years in each generation show small 
trace of it. Even as late as the sixteenth cen- 
tury, the workman fared little better than the 
brutes. Erasmus tells us that their houses had 
no chimneys, and their floors were bare ground ; 
while Fortescue, who travelled in France at 
the same time, reports a misery and degrada- 
tion which have had vivid portraiture in Taine's 
*^ Ancien Regime.'' 

A flood of wealth poured in on the discovery 
of the New World. The invention of gun- 
powder put a new face upon warfare, and that 
of printing made possible the cheap and wide 
dissemination of long-smouldering ideas. Eco- 
nomic problems perplexed every country, and 
on all sides methods of solving them were put 
in action. Sully, who found in Henry IV. of 
France an ardent supporter of his wishes for her 
prosperity, had altered and systematized taxes, 
and introduced a multitude of reforms in gen- 



5 4 Women Wage- Earners . 

eral administration ; and later, Colbert did even 
more notable work. The Italian Republics had 
made their noble code of commercial rules and 
maxims. The Dutch had given to the world 
one of the most wonderful examples of what 
man may accomplish by sheer pluck and per- 
sistent hard work, and commercial institu- 
tions founded on a principle of liberty; and 
neither the terror of the Spanish rule nor the 
jealousy of England had destroyed her power. 
Credit, banking, all modern forms of exchange 
were coming into use ; and agriculture, w^hich 
the feudal system had kept in a state of 
torpor, awakened and became a productive 
power. 

Side by side with this were gigantic specu- 
lations, like that of John Law and the East 
India Company, with the helpless ruin of its 
collapse. The time was ripe for the formula- 
tion of some system of economic laws ; and two 
men who had long pondered them, De Gour- 
nay and Quesnay, made the first attempt to 
explain the meaning of wealth and its distri- 
bution. After Quesnay and his system, still 
holding honorable place, came Turgot; after 
Turgot, Adam Smith ; and thenceforward halt is 



A Look Backward. 55 

impossible, and economic science marches on 
with giant strides. 

In all this progress woman had shared many 
of the material benefits, but her industrial posi- 
tion had altered but slightly. Driven from the 
trades, she had passed into the ranks of agri- 
cultural laborers; and Thorold Rogers, in his 
** Work and Wages,'* records her early work 
in this direction. France held the most en- 
lightened view, and even then women took 
. active part in business, and had a position un- 
known in any other country; but they had no 
place in any system of the economists, nor did 
their labor count as a force to be enumerated. 
Slowly machinery was making its way, feared 
and hated by the lower order of workers, eyed 
distrustfully and uncertainly by the higher. 
Men and women struggling for bare subsist- 
ence had become active competitors, till, in 
1789, a general petition entitled ** Petition of 
Women of the Third Estate to the King '' was 
signed by hundreds of French workers, who, 
made desperate by starvation and underpay, 
demanded that every business which included 
spinning, weaving, sewing, or knitting should 
be given to women exclusively. Side by side 



56 Women Wage- Earners. 

with the wave of poHtical revolution, strongest 
for France and America, came the industrial 
revolution ; and the opening of the nineteenth 
century brought with it the myriad changes 
we are now to face. 



During the Colonial Period. 57 



II. 



EMPLOYMENTS FOR WOMEN DURING THE COLO- 
NIAL PERIOD, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
THE FACTORY. 

FOR nearly a century and a half, dating 
from the landing of the Pilgrims on 
Plymouth Rock, the condition of laboring 
women was that of the same class in all strug- 
gling colonies. There were practically no 
women wage-earners, save in domestic service, 
where a home and from thirty to a hundred 
dollars a year was accounted wealth, the latter 
sum being given in a few instances to the house- 
keepers in great houses. Each family represented 
a commonwealth, and its women gave every 
energy to the crowding duties of a daily life 
filled with manifold occupations. 

The farmer — for all were farmers — was often 
blacksmith, shoemaker, and carpenter, and more 
or less proficient in every trade whose offices 
were called for in the family life. The farmer's 



58 Women Wage- Earners. 

wife spun and wove the cloth he wore and the 
linen that made his household furnishing, and 
was dyer and dresser, brewer and baker, seam- 
stress, milliner, and dressmaker. The quickness, 
adaptiveness to new conditions, and the fertility 
of resource which are recognized as distinguish- 
ing the American, were born of the colonial 
struggle, especially of the final one which sepa- 
rated us forever from English rule. 

The wage of the few women found in labor 
outside the home was gauged by that which 
had ruled in England. For unskilled labor, as 
that employed occasionally in agriculture, this 
had been from one shilling and sixpence for 
ordinary field work to two shillings a week paid 
in haying and harvest time. For hoeing corn 
or rough weeding there is record of one shilling 
per week, and this is the usual wage for old 
women. To this were added various allowances 
which have gradually fallen into disuse. A full 
record of these and of rates in general will be 
found in '' Six Centuries of Work and Wages." ^ 

Unskilled labor during the whole colonial 
period — meaning by this such labor as that of 
the men who sawed wood, dug ditches, or 

1 By Thorold Rogers. 



During the Colonial Period. 59 

mended roads, mixed mortar for the mason, 
carried boards to the carpenter, or cut hay in 
harvest time — brought a wage of seldom more 
than two shilHngs a day, fifteen shiUings a week 
making a man the envy of his fellows, while six 
or seven was the utmost limit for w^omen of the 
same order. 

On this pittance they lived as they could. 
Sand did duty as carpet for the floor. The 
cupboard knew no china, and the table no glass. 
Coal and matches were unknown; they had 
never seen a stove. The meals of coarsest food 
w^ere eaten from wooden or pewter dishes. 
Fresh meat was seldom eaten more than once 
a week. A pound of salt pork was tenpence, 
and corn three shillings a bushel. Clothing was 
as coarse as the food, and imprisonment for the 
slightest debt was the shadow hanging over 
every family where illness or any other cause 
had hindered earning. Boys and girls in the 
poorer families were employed by the owners 
of cattle to watch and keep them within bounds, 
countless troubles arising from their roaming 
over the unfenced fields. Andover, Mass., 
being from the beginning of a thrifty turn of 
mind, passed, soon after the founding of the 



6o Women Wage-Earners. 

town, an ordinance which still stands on the 
town records : — 

" The Court did herupon order and decree that in 
every towne the chosen men are to take care of such 
as are sett to keep cattle, that they may be sett to 
some other employment withall, as spinning upon the 
rock, knitting and weaving tape, &c." 

Spinning-classes were also formed ; the Gen- 
eral Court of Massachusetts ordering these in 
1656, this being part of the general effort to 
begin some form of manufactures. But fishing 
to load ships, and shipbuilding to carry cured 
fish absorbed the energies of the growing pop- 
ulation ; and these vessels brought textiles and 
manufactured goods from the cheapest markets 
everywhere and anywhere.^ 

These " homespun '' industries soon showed 
a tendency toward division. By 1669 rntich 
weaving was done outside the home as custom 
work ; and there is record of one Gabriel Harris 
who died in 1684 leaving four looms and tack- 
lings and a silk loom as part of the small fortune 
he had accumulated in this way.^ His six chil- 

1 Weeden's Economic and Social History of New Eng- 
land, vol. i. p. 304. 
'2 Caulkins, p. 273. 



During the Colonial Period. 6i 

dren and some hired women assisted in the 
work. In 1685 Joseph, the son of Roger 
Williams, entered in an account book now 
extant,^ a credit to *' Sarah badkuk [Babcock], 
for weven and coaming wisted/* This work 
was, however, chiefly in the hands of men. 

The records of Pepperell, Mass., show that 
many women saved their pin money, and sent 
out little ventures in the ships built at home 
and sailing to all ports with fish. These ven- 
tures included articles of clothing, embroideries, 
and anything that it seemed might be made to 
yield some return. There were also women of 
affairs, some of whom took charge of large 
industries. Thus Weeden, in his '' Economic 
and Social History of New England," quotes 
from an interesting memorandum left by Madam 
Martha Smith, a widow of St. George's Manor, 
Long Island,^ which shows her practical ability. 
In January, 1707, ** my company" killed a year- 
ling whale, and made twenty-seven barrels of oil. 
The record gives her success for the year, and 
the tax she paid to the authorities at New York, 
— fifteen pounds and fifteen shillings, a twentieth 
part of her year's gains. 

1 Rider^s Book Notes, vol. ii. p. 7. 

2 Boston News-Letter, Jan. 25. 1773. 



62 Women Wage-Earners. 

Other women oversaw the curing of the fish ; 
but there is no record of the wage beyond the 
general one which for the earhest days of the 
colony gives rates for women as from four to 
eight pence a day without food. These rates 
followed almost literally those of England at 
that time. Half of the day's earnings were 
accounted an equivalent for diet, and contrac- 
tors for feeding gangs in agriculture, among 
sailors, or wherever the system was adopted, 
allowed seven and one-half pence per day a 
head for men and women alike. Women ser- 
vants received ten shillings a year wages, and an 
allowance of four shillings additional for cloth- 
ing. The working day still remained as fixed 
by the law late in the fifteenth century, — from 
five A. M. to eight P. M., from March to Septem- 
ber, with half an hour for breakfast, and an 
hour and a half for dinner. 

These rates gradually altered, but for women 
hardly at all, the wages during the eighteenth 
century ranging from four to six pounds a 
year. The colony, however, gave opportunities 
unknown to the mother country, and gardening 
and the cultivation of small vegetables seem to 
have fallen much into the hands of women.^ 

^ Boston News-Letter, Jan. 25, 1773. 



During the Colonial Period, 63 

They had studied the best methods for hot- 
beds, and grew early vegetables in these, the 
first record of this being in 1759. 

Gloves were by this time made at home, but- 
tons covered, and many small industries con- 
ducted, all connected with the manufacture and 
making up of clothing. Patriotic spinning 
occupied many; and the *' Boston News-Letter" 
has it that often seventy linen-wheels were 
employed at one gathering. The agitation 
caused by the Stamp Act turned the attention 
of all women to the production of cloth as a 
domestic business. Worcester, Mass., in 1780 
formed an association for the spinning and 
weaving of cotton, and a jenny was bought by 
subscription.^ 

Prices by this time had risen, and in 1776 the 
Andover records mention that a Miss Holt was 
paid eighteen shillings for spinning seventy-two 
skeins, and seven shillings eleven pence for 
weaving nineteen yards of cloth. Women gen- 
erally could spin two skeins of linen yarn a 
day; but there is record of one, a Miss Eleanor 
Fry of East Greenwich, R. I., who spun seven 
skeins and one knot in one day, — an amount 
1 Barry's Massachusetts, vol. xi. p. 193. 



64 Women Wage-Earners. 

sufficient to make twelve large lawn hand- 
kerchiefs such as were then imported from 
England. 

Within four years another Rhode Island fam- 
ily of Newport are recorded in 1768 as having 
" manufactured nine hundred and eighty yards 
of woolen cloth, besides two coverlids (cover- 
lets), and two bed-ticks, and all the stocking 
yarn of the family." 

The Council of East Greenwich fixed prices 
at that time at rates which se.em purely arbi- 
trary and are certainly incomprehensible. Thus 
for spinning linen or worsted, five or six skeins 
to the pound, the price was not to exceed six- 
pence per skein of fifteen knots, with finer 
work in proportion. Carded woollen yarn was 
the same per skein. Weaving plain flannel or 
tow or linen brought fivepence per yard ; com- 
mon worsted and linen, one penny a yard ; 
and other linens in like proportion.^ 

Silk growing and weaving had been the re- 
sult of the silkworm cocoons sent over by 
James the First, who offered bounties of money 
and tobacco for spun and woven silk according 

1 Weeden's Social and Economic History of New Eng- 
land, vol. ii. p. 790. 



During the Colonial Period, 65 

to weight. Three women were famous before 
the Revolution as silk growers and weavers, — 
Mrs. Pinckney, Grace Fisher, and Susanna 
Wright ; and at all points where the mulberry- 
tree was indigenous or could be made to grow, 
fortune was regarded as assured. The project 
failed ; but the efforts then made paved the way 
for present experiment, and even better success 
than that already attained. 

The manufacture of straw goods, amounting 
now to many million dollars yearly, owes its 
origin to a woman, — Miss Betsey Metcalf, who 
in 1789, when hardly more than a child, dis- 
covered the secret of bleaching and braiding 
the meadow grass of Dedham, her native town. 
Others were taught, and a regular business 
of supplying the want for summer hats and 
bonnets was organized, and has grown to its 
present large proportions. 

At this period women widowed by the for- 
tune of war or forced by the absence of all the 
male members of the family on the field, were 
often found in business. The mother of 
Thomas Perkins of Salem, one of the great 
American merchants, left widowed in 1778, took 
her husband's place in the counting-house, 

5 



66 Women Wage-Earners. 

managed business, despatched ships, sold mer- 
chandise, wrote letters, all with such command- 
ing energy that the solid Hollanders wrote to 
her as to a man.^ The record of one day's 
work of Mary Moody Emerson, born in 1777, 
reads : — 

^' Rose before light every morn ; read Butler's 
Analogy ; commented on the Scriptures ; read in 
a little book Cicero's Letters — a few touches of 
Shakespeare — washed, carded, cleaned house and 
baked." 2 

There is another woman no less busy, a 
member of the distinguished Nott family, who 
did work in her house and helped her boys in 
the fields. In midwinter, with neither money 
nor wool in the house, one of the boys required 
a new suit. The mother sheared the half- 
grown fleece from a sheep, and in a week had 
spun, wove, and made it into clothing, the sheep 
being protected from cold by a wrappage made 
of braided straw. 

Details like this would be out of place here 
did they not serve to accent the fact of the 

1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
1798-1835, p. 353. 
'-2 Atlantic Monthly, Uccember, 1883, p. ^']2y 



During the Colonial Period, 67 

concentration of industries under the home 
roof, and the necessity that existed for this. 
But a change was near at hand, and it dates 
from the first bale of cotton grown in the 
country. 

In the early years of the eighteenth century 
not a manufacturing town existed in New Eng- 
land, and for the whole country it was much 
the same. A few paper-mills turned out paper 
hardly better in quality than that which comes 
to us to-day about our grocery packages. In 
a foundry or two iron was melted into pigs or 
beaten into bars and nails. Cocked hats and 
felts were made in one factory. Cotton was 
hardly known.^ De Bow, in his ^* Industrial 
Resources of the United States,*' tells us that 
a little had been sent to Liverpool just before 
the battle of Lexington ; but linen took the 
place of all cotton fabrics, and was spun at 
every hearth in New England. 

In the eight bales of cotton, grown on a 
Georgia plantation, sent over to Liverpool in 
1784, and seized at the Custom House on the 
ground that so much cotton could not be pro- 

1 For further detail, see McMaster's History of the United 
States, vol. i. p. 62. 



68 Wo7nen Wage-Earners. 

duced in America, but must come from some 
foreign country, lay the seed of a new move- 
ment in labor, in which, from the beginning, 
women have taken larger part than men. By 
1800 cotton had proved itself a staple for the 
Southern States, and even the second war with 
England hardly hindered the planters. In 
1 79 1 two million pounds had been raised; in 
1804 forty-eight million; the invention of the 
cotton-gin, in 1793, stimulating to the utmost 
the enthusiasm of the South over this new road 
to fortune. 

It is with the birth of the cotton industry that 
the work and wages of women begin to take 
coherent shape ; and the history of the new 
occupation divides itself roughly into three 
periods. The first includes the ten or fifteen 
years prior to 1790, and may be called the 
experimental period ; the second covers the 
time from 1790 to 181 1, in which the spinning- 
system was established and perfected ; and the 
third the years immediately following 18 14, in 
which came the introduction of the power loom 
and the growth of the modern factory system. 

The experimental stage found an enthusiastic 
w^orker in the person of Tench Coxe, known 



During the Colonial Pe^Hod, 69 

often as the ** Father of American Industries/' 
whose interest in the beginning was philan- 
thropic rather than commercial. Bent upon 
employment for idle and destitute workmen, he 
exhibited in Philadelphia in 177S the first spin- 
ning-jenny seen in America. He had already 
incorporated the " United Company of Phila- 
delphia for Promoting American Manufactures/' 
and they at once secured the machine and made 
ready to operate it. Four hundred women 
were very speedily at work at hand spinning 
and weaving; and though the company pres- 
ently turned its attention to woollen fabrics, a 
large proportion of women was still employed. 

Till the building of the great mill at Wal- 
tham, Mass., in which every form of the im- 
proved machinery found place, spinning was 
the only work of the factories. All the yarn 
was sent out among the farmers to be woven 
into cloth, the current prices paid for this 
being from six to twelve cents a yard. Amer- 
ican cotton was poor, and the product of a 
quality inferior to the coarsest and heaviest 
unbleached of to-day; but experiment soon 
altered all this. 

To manufacture the raw product in this coun- 



70 Women Wage-Earners. 

try was a necessity. For England this had 
begun in 1786 ; but she guarded so jealously all 
inventions bearing upon it that none found 
their way to us. Our machinery was therefore 
of the most imperfect order, the work chiefly 
of two young Scotch mechanics. In 1788 a 
company was formed at Providence, R. I., for 
making ** homespun cloth,'* their machinery 
being made in part from drawings from Eng- 
lish models. Carding and roving were all done 
by hand labor ; and the spinning-frame, with 
thirty-two spindles, differed little from a com- 
mon jenny, and was worked by a crank turned 
by hand. 

Even at this stage England was determined 
that America should have neither machinery 
nor tools, and still held to the act passed in 
1789 which enforced a penalty of five hundred 
pounds for any one who exported, or tried to 
export, " blocks, plates, engines, tools, or uten- 
sils used in or which are proper for the prepar- 
ing or finishing of the calico, cotton, muslin, or 
linen printing manufacture, or any part thereof.'' 

Nothing could have more stimulated Ameri- 
can invention ; but there were many struggles 
before the thought finally came to all interested, 



During the Colonial Period. 71 

that it might be possible to condense the whole 
operation with all its details under one roof, — 
a project soon carried out. 

Thus far all had been tentative; but the 
building in 1790 at Pawtucket, R. I., of the 
first large factory with improved machinery 
gave the industry permanent place. Another 
mill was erected in the same State in 1795, and 
two more in Massachusetts in 1 802 and 1803. 
In the three succeeding years ten more were 
built in Rhode Island and one in Connecticut, 
altogether fifteen in number, working about 
8,000 spindles and producing in a year some 
300,000 pounds of yarn. At the end of the 
year 1809 eighty-seven additional mills had 
been put up, making about 80,000 spindles in 
operation. Eight hundred spindles employed 
forty persons, — five men and thirty-five women 
and children. 

The first authoritative record as to the pro- 
gress of the manufacture, numbers employed, 
etc., was made in a report to the House of 
Representatives in the spring session of 18 16. 
In the previous year 90,000 bales had been 
manufactured as against 1,000 in 1800. The 
capital invested was ^40,000, and the relative 



72 Women Wage- Earners. 

number of males and females employed is also 
recorded, — 

Males employed from the age of 17 and upward 10,000 

Women and female children 66,000 

Boys under 17 years of age 24,000 

For these women spinning was the only work. 
Hand-looms still did all the weaving, nor was it 
possible to obtain any plan of the power looms, 
— then in use in England, and a recent invention. 
Another mill had been built in 1795 ; and thus 
the first definite and profitable occupation for 
women in this country dates back to the close 
of the eighteenth and the early years of the 
nineteenth century, the history of its phases 
having been written by Tench Coxe. The vil- 
lage tailoress had long gone from house to 
house, earning in the beginning but a shilling 
a day, and this sometimes paid in kind; and 
in towns a dressmaker or milliner was secure 
of a livelihood. But work for the many was 
unknown outside of household life ; and thus 
wage rates vary with locality, and are in most 
cases inferential rather than matter of record. 

Cotton would seem, from the beginning of 
manufacturing interests, to have monopolized 
New England ; but other industries had been 



During the Colonial Period. 73 

very early suggested. In May, 1640, the Gen- 
eral Court of Massachusetts made an order for 
the encouragement by bounties of the manu- 
facture of linen and woollen as well as cotton. 
In 1638 a company of Yorkshiremen came over 
and settled in Rowley, Mass., where they built 
the first fulling-mill in the United States. Fus- 
tians and the ordinary homespun cloth were 
woven ; but few women were employed, the work 
being far heavier than the weaving of cotton. 
It was hoped that broadcloths as good as those 
imported could be made ; but American wool 
proved less susceptible of high finish, though 
of better wearing quality than the English. 
Various grades of cloth, with shawls, were manu- 
factured; but the growth of the industry was 
slow, and constantly hampered by heavy duties 
and much interference. In 1770 the entire 
graduating class at Harvard College were 
dressed in black broadcloth made in this coun- 
try, the weaving of which had been done in 
families. Yarn was sent to these after the wool 
had been made ready in the mills, and the 
census of the United States for 1810 gives 
the number of yards woven in this way as 
9,528,266. 



74 Women Wage-Earners. 

What proportion of women were engaged 
we have no means of knowing ; but the census 
of i860 shows that New England had 65 per 
cent of the total number then at work. The 
cotton manufacture had but 38 per cent of 
males as against 62 per cent of females ; while in 
woollen, males were 60 per cent. In New Eng- 
land 10,743 women were in woollen-mills; in 
the Middle States, 4,540; and in the South, 689. 
For the West no returns are given. Many- 
more would be included in the Southern returns 
were it not that most of the weaving is still a 
home industry, this resulting from the sparse- 
ness and scattered nature of the population. 

Knitting formed one of the earliest means 
of earning for women, the demand for hose 
of every description being beyond the power 
of the family to supply. Knitting-machines of 
various orders were in use on the Continent, 
and had been brought into England ; but any 
attempt to employ them here was for a long 
time unsuccessful. Yarn was spun especially 
for this purpose, usually with a double thread, 
and in the year 1698 Martha's Vineyard ex- 
ported 9,000 pairs. The German and English 
settlers of Pennsylvania brought many hand- 



During the Colonial Period, 75 

knitting machines with them, and were rivals of 
New England ; but Virginia led, and the cen- 
sus of 1 8 10 credits her with over half of the 
hand-knit pairs exported, Connecticut coming 
next. In Pennsylvania the women earned half 
a crown a pair for the long hose, and this in 
the opening of the eighteenth century; and the 
State still retains it as a household industry. 
The percentage for the United States of women 
engaged in it by the last census is 61,100. 

The early stages of the industry employed 
very few women, the processes involving too 
heavy labor; and out of 159 workers in the 
first mills, only eight were women, these being 
employed in carding and fulling. According 
to our last census, 10,743 are employed in New 
England mills alone ; but the proportion re- 
mains far below that of the cotton-mills, and 
at many points in the South and remote terri- 
tories it is still a household industry in which 
all share. 

Until well on in the nineteenth century the 
factory and the domestic system were still inter- 
woven, nor had there been intelligent definition 
of the actual meaning of this system until Ure 
formulated one : — 



76 Women Wage- Earners. 

^^The factory system in technology is simply the 
combined operation of many orders of work-people 
in tending with assiduous skill a series of productive 
machines, continuously impelled by a central power." ^ 

A central power controlling an army of 
workers had been the dream of all mechani- 
cians ; and Ure formulated this also : — 

'^ It is the idea of a vast automaton, composed of 
various mechanical and intellectual organs, acting in 
uninterrupted concert for the production of a com- 
mon object, - — all of them being subordinate to a 
self-regulated moving force." 

This was the result brought about by the 
gradual extension of the factory system. The 
objections made from the beginning, and still 
made, with such answers as experience has sug- 
gested, find place later on. 

1 Philosophy of Manufactures, by Andrew Ure, M.D., p. 13. 



Aspects of Factory Labor. 77 



III. 



EARLY ASPECTS OF FACTORY LABOR FOR 
WOMEN. 

IACK not only of machinery but of any 
-^ facilities for its manufacture hampered 
and delayed the progress of the factory move- 
ment in the United States ; but these difficul- 
ties were at last overcome, and in 18 13 Waltham, 
Mass., saw what is probably the first factory in 
the world that combined under one roof every 
process for converting raw cotton into finished 
cloth. 

Manufacturing, even when most hampered by 
the burden of taxation then imposed and the 
heavy duties and other restrictions following the 
long war, began under happier conditions than 
have ever been known elsewhere. Unskilled 
labor had smallest place, and of this class New 
England had for long next to no knowledge. 
Her workers in the beginning were recruited 
from the outlying country ; and the women and 



78 Women Wage-Earners. 

girls who flocked into Lowell, as in the earliest 
years they had flocked into Pawtucket, were New- 
Englanders by birth and training. This meant 
not only quickness and deftness of handling, 
but the conscientious filling of every hour with 
the utmost work it could be made to hold. 

The life of the Lowell factory-girls has full 
record in the little magazine called the *^ Lowell 
Offering," published by them for ^many years. 
Lucy Larcom has also lately given her '' Recol- 
lections,'' one of the most valuable and charac- 
teristic pictures of the life from year to year, 
and it tallies with the summary made by Dick- 
ens in his '* American Notes." Beginning as a 
child of eleven, whose business was simply to 
change bobbins, she received a wage of one 
dollar a week, with one dollar and a quarter for 
board, the allowance made by most of the cor- 
porations while the system of boarding-houses 
in connection with the factories lasted. The 
oldest corporation, known as the Merrimack, 
introduced this system, and for many years 
retained oversight of all in its employ. With 
increasing competition and the increase of the 
foreign element, alteration of methods began, 
and Lowell lost its characteristic features. 



Aspects of Factory Labor. 79 

In the beginning the conditions of factory 
labor for New England at the point where work 
was initiated, were, as compared with those of 
England, almost idyllic. The Lowell workers 
came from New England farms, many of them 
for the sake of being near libraries and schools, 
and thus securing larger opportunities for self- 
culture. 

The agricultural class then outranked mer- 
chants and mechanics. There were no class 
distinctions, and the workers shared in the best 
social life of Lowell. The factory was an epi- 
sode rather than a career ; and the buildings 
themselves were kept as clean as the nature of 
the work admitted, growing plants filling the 
windows; and the swift-flowing Merrimac turn- 
ing the wheels. 

In 1 841 the girls had to their credit in the 
savings-banks established by the corporations 
over one hundred thousand dollars ; and many 
of them shared their earnings with brothers who 
sought a college education, or lifted the mort- 
gages on the home farms. At the International 
Council of Women, held in Washington in 1888, 
Mrs. H. H. Robinson, after telling how she 
entered the Lowell Mills as a '' doffer/' when a 



8o Women Wage-Earners. 

child, gave a brilliant description of the intel- 
lectual life and interests of the workers. She 
remained in the mill till married, and said : *' I 
consider the Lowell Mills as my alma 7nater, 
and am as proud of them as most girls of the 
colleges in which they have been educated.'* 

With the growth of the factory system under 
very different conditions from that of Lowell, 
there were as different results. Factories had 
risen, at every available point in New Eng- 
land, all of them thronged by women and 
girls. But great cities were still unknown ; 
and the first census, that for 1790, showed 
that hardly four per cent of the people were 
in them. The tide set toward the factory 
towns as strongly as it now does toward 
the cities, though factory labor for the most 
part was of almost incredible severity. The 
length of a day's labor varied from twelve to 
fifteen hours, the mills of New England running 
generally thirteen hours a day the year round. 
Several mills are on record, the day in one of 
which was fourteen hours, and in the other 
fifteen hours and ten minutes, this latter being 
the Eagle Mill at Griswold, Conn. ; and previous 
to 1858 there were many others where hours 



Aspects of Factory Labor. 8i 

were equally long. Work began at five in the 
morning, or at some points a little later ; and 
there is a known instance of a mill in Paterson, 
N. J., in which women and children were re- 
quired to be at work by half-past four in the 
morning. 

In most of the New England factories, the 
operatives were taxed for the support of re- 
ligion. The Lowell Company dismissed them 
if often absent from church, and their lives 
without and within the factory were regulated 
as minutely as if in the cloister. Women and 
children were urged on by the cowhide; and 
the first inspection of the factories, notably in 
Connecticut, revealed a state of things hardly 
less harrowing than that which had brought 
about the passage of the first Factory Acts in 
England. At the same time wages were very 
inadequate. In twelve hours' daily labor the 
weavers of Baltimore were able to earn from 
sixty to seventy cents a day, the wage of the 
women being half or a third this amount ; and 
they declared it not enough to pay the expenses 
of schooling for the children. 

With the increase of production and the 
growing competition of manufacturers, wages 

6 



82 Women Wage-Earners. 

were steadily forced downward. Less and less 
attention was paid to the comfort or well-being 
of the operatives, and many factories were unfit 
working-places for human beings. Overseers, 
whose duty it was to keep up the utmost rate 
of speed, flogged children brutally ; and the 
treatment was so barbarous that a boy of twelve 
at Mendon, Mass., drowned himself to escape 
factory labor. Windows were often nailed down, 
and their raising forbidden even in the hottest 
weather. 

The most formidable and trustworthy arraign- 
ment of these conditions is to be found in a 
pamphlet printed in 1834, the full title of which 
is as follows : *' An Address to the Working- 
men of New England, on the State of Education, 
and on the Condition of the Producing Classes 
in Europe and America." 

The author of this pamphlet, a mechanic of 
some education, stirred to the heart by the 
abuses he saw, made an exhaustive examination 
of the New England mills ; and he gives many 
details of the hours of labor, the wages of 
employees, and the abuses of power which he 
found everywhere among unscrupulous manu- 
facturers. The principal value of his work lies 



Aspects of Factory Labor. 83 

in this, and in his reprint of original documents 
like the '* General Rules of the Lowell Manu- 
facturing Company," and '' The Conditions on 
which Help is hired by the Cocheco Manu- 
facturing Company, Dover, N. H.'' These 
conditions were so oppressive that in several 
cases revolt took place, — usually unsuccessful, 
as no organization existed among the women, 
and they were powerless to effect any marked 
change for the better. 

By 1835 chiefly the poorer order of workers 
filled the mills, but even skilled labor made 
constant complaint of cruelties and injustices. 
Not only were there distressing cases of cruelty 
to children, but outrage of every kind had been 
found to exist among the women workers, whose 
wage had been lowered till nearly at the point 
known to-day as the subsistence point. Parents 
then, as now, gave false returns of age, and 
caught greedily at the prospect of any earning 
by their children ; and any specific enactments 
as to schooling, etc., were still delayed. 

These evils were not confined to New England, 
but existed at every point where manufacturing 
was carried on. But New England was first to 
decide on the necessity for some organized 



84 Women Wage-Earners. 

remonstrance and resistance, and the first meet- 
ing to this end was held in February, 1831. Of 
this there is no record ; but the second, held in 
September, 1832, is given in the first ** Report 
of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor/' issued 
in 1870. Boston sent thirty delegates, and the 
workingmen of New York City addressed a 
letter to the workers of the United States, show- 
ing that the same causes of unrest and agitation 
existed at all points. 

** These evils," they said, *' arise from the 
moral obliquity of the fastidious, and the cupid- 
ity of the avaricious. They consist in an 
illiberal opinion of the worth and rights of the 
laboring classes, an unjust estimation of their 
moral, physical, and intellectual powers, and 
unwise misapprehension of the effects which 
would result from the cultivation of their minds 
and the improvement of their condition, and an 
avaricious propensity to avail of their laborious 
services, at the lowest possible rate of wages 
for which they can be induced to work." 

The evils protested against here did not 
lessen as time went on. Irish emigration had 
begun in 1836, and speedily drove out Ameri- 
can labor, which was in any case insufficient 



Aspects of Factory Labor. 85 

for the need. A lowered wage was the immedi- 
ate consequence, the foreigner having no stand- 
ard of Hving that included more than bare 
necessaries. At this distance from the struggle 
it is easy to see that the new life was educa- 
tional for the emigrant, and also forced the 
American worker into new and often broader 
channels. But for those involved such per- 
ception was impossible, and the new-comers 
were regarded with something like hatred. 
English and German emigrants followed, to 
give place in their turn to the French-Canadian, 
who at present in great degree monopolizes the 
mills. 

In the beginning little or no effort was made 
toward healthful conditions of work and life, 
or more than the merest hint of education. 
England, in which far worse conditions had 
existed, had, early in the century, seen the 
necessity of remedial legislation. But though 
the first English Factory Act was passed in 
1802, it was not till 1844 that women and 
children were brought under its provisions. 
The first one, known as the Health and Morals 
Act, was the result of the discovery made first 
by voluntary, then by appointed inspectors, that 



86 Women Wage-Earners. 

neither health nor morals remained for factory- 
workers, and that hopeless deterioration would 
result unless government interfered at once. 
Hideous epidemic diseases, an extinction of 
any small natural endowment of moral sense, 
and a daily life far below that of the brutes, had 
showed themselves as industries and the attend- 
ant competition developed ; and the story in all 
its horror may be read in English Bluebooks 
and the record of government inspectors, and 
made accessible in the works of Giffen, 
Toynbee, Engels, and other names identified 
with reform. 

The bearing of these acts upon legislation in 
our country is so strong that a summary of the 
chief points must find mention here. In the 
Act of 1802 the hours of work, which had been 
from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, were fixed 
at twelve. All factories were required to be 
frequently whitewashed, and to have a sufficient 
number of windows, though these provisions 
applied only to apprenticed operatives. In 
1 8 19 an act forbade the employment of any 
child under nine years of age, and in 1825 
Saturday was made a half-holiday. Night work 
was forbidden in 1 831, and for all under eigh- 



Aspects of Factory Labor, 87 

teen the working day was made twelve hours, 
with nine for Saturday. 

By 1847 public opinion demanded still more 
change for the better, and the day was made 
ten hours for working women and young per- 
sons between thirteen and eighteen years, though 
they were allowed to work between six A. M. 
and six P. M., with an allowance of an hour and 
a half at mealtime. Our own evils, while in 
many points far less, still were in the same 
direction. Here and there a like evasion of 
responsibility and of the provisions of the law 
was to be found. Even when a corps of 
inspectors were appointed, they were bribed, 
hoodwinked, and generally put off the track, 
while the provisions in regard to the shielding 
of dangerous machinery, cleanhness, etc., were 
ignored by every possible method. Were law 
obeyed and its provisions thoroughly carried 
out, English factory operatives would be better 
protected than those of any other country, 
America not accepted. Sanitary conditions are 
required to be good. All factories are to be 
i^ kept clean, as any effluvia arising from closets, 
etc.. renders the owners liable to a fine. The 
generation of gas, dust, etc., must be neutral- 



88 Women Wage- Earners. 

ized by the inventions for this purpose, so that 
operatives may not be harmed thereby. Any 
manufacturer allowing machinery to remain 
unprotected is to be prosecuted ; and there are 
minute regulations forbidding any child or 
young person to clean or walk between the 
fixed and traversing part of any self-acting 
machine while in motion. At least two hours 
must be allowed for meals, nor are these to 
be taken in any room where manufacturing is 
going on. 

For this country such provisions were long 
delayed, nor have we even now the necessary 
regulations as to the protection of machinery. 
In the early days, though many mills were built 
by men who sought honestly to provide their 
employees with as many alleviations as the 
nature of the work admitted, many more were 
absolutely blind to anything but their own 
interest. With the disabilities resulting we are 
to deal at another point. It is sufficient to 
say here, that the struggle for factory-workers 
became more and more severe, and has 
remained so to the present day. 

The increase of women workers in this field 
had been steady. In 1865 women operatives 



Aspects of Factory Labor. 89 

in the factories of Massachusetts were 32,239, 
or nineteen per cent of men operatives. In 1875 
they were 83,207, or twenty-six per cent ; and the 
increase since that date has been in Hke propor- 
tion. From the time of their first employment in 
mills the increase has been on themselves over 
three hundred per cent. In Massachusetts mills 
women and children are from two thirds to five 
sixths of all employed, and the proportion in 
all the manufacturing portions of New England 
is nearly the same. 

In judging the factory system as a whole, it 
is necessary to glance at the conditions of home 
work preceding it. These* are given in full 
detail in historical and economical treatises, 
notably in Lecky's *' History of the Eighteenth 
Century,'' and in Dr. Kay's ** Moral and Physical 
Condition of the Working Classes." A list of the 
more important authorities on the subject will be 
found in the general bibliography at the end. 

The conditions that prevailed in other coun- 
tries were less strenuous with us, but the same 
objections to the domestic system held good at 
many points. In weaving, the looms occupied 
large part of the family living space, and over- 
crowding and all its evils were inevitable. 



90 Women Wage-Earners. 

Drunkenness was more common, as well as the 
stealing of materials by dishonest workers. 
Time was lost in going for material and in 
returning it, and only half as much was accom- 
plished. Homes were uncared for and often 
filthy, and the work was done in half-lighted, 
airless rooms. 

These conditions are often reproduced in part 
even to-day in buildings not adapted to their 
present use ; but as a whole it is certain that 
the homes of factory-workers are cleaner, that 
regulation has proved beneficial, that light and 
air are furnished in better measure, and that 
overcrowding has become impossible. This 
applies only to textile manufactures, where 
machines must have room. 

In an admirable chapter on the ** Factory 
System,'' prepared by Colonel Carroll D. 
Wright for the Tenth Census of the United 
States, he takes up in detail the objections 
urged against it. These are as follows: — 

"A. The factory system necessitates the employ- 
ment of women and children to an injurious extent, 
and consequently its tendency is to destroy family 
life and ties and domestic habi^s^ and ultimately the 
home. 



Aspects of* Factory Labor. 91 

B. Factory employments are injurious to health. 

C. The factory system is productive of intemper- 
ance, unthrift, and poverty. 

D. It feeds prostitution, and swells the criminal list. 

E. It tends to intellectual degeneracy. 

Under ** A " there is small defence to be 
made. The employment of married women is 
fruitful of evil) and the proportion of these in 
Massachusetts is 23.8 per cent. Wherever this 
per cent is high, infant mortality is very great, 
being 23.5 per cent for Massachusetts and 19 
per cent for Connecticut and New Hampshire. 
The " Labor Bureau Reports " for New Jersey 
treat the subject in detail, and are strongly 
opposed to the employment of mothers of 
young children outside the home; and the 
conclusion is the same at other points. 

In the matter of general injury to health, 
under ** B," it is stated that many factories are 
far better ventilated and lighted than the homes 
of the operatives. Ignorant employees cannot 
be impressed with the need of care on these 
points, and the air in their homes is foul and 
productive of disease. A cotton-mill is often 
better ventilated than a court-room or a lecture- 
room. A well-built factory allows not less than 



92 Women Wage- Earners. 

six hundred cubic feet of air space to a person, 
thirty to sixty cubic feet a minute being re- 
quired. Ranke, in his '' Elements of Physiology/' 
makes it thirty-five a minute. 

The homes of operatives have steadily im- 
proved in character; and wherever there is an 
intelligent class of operatives, regulations are 
obeyed, and sanitary conditions are fair and 
often perfect, while the tendency is toward more 
and more care in every respect. Operatives* 
homes are often better guarded against sanitary 
evils than those of farmers or the ordinary 
laborer. 

Under *' C it is shown conclusively that the 
factory has diminished intemperance, — Rey- 
baud's ^* History of the Factory Movement '' giv- 
ing full statistics on this point, as well as in regard 
to the growth of banks and benefit societies. The 
standard of living is higher here, but there are 
countless evidences of thrift and a general rise 
in condition. 

In the matter of prostitution, under " D,'' it is 
shown that but eight per cent of this class come 
from the factory, twenty-nine per cent being 
from domestic service. In Lynn, Mass., a town 
chosen for illustration because of the large per- 



1 



Aspects of Factory Labor. 93 

centage of factory operatives, it was found that 
but seven per cent of those arrested were from 
this class ; and this is true of all points where 
the foreign-born element is not largely in the 
majority. 

Last comes the question of intellectual de- 
generacy, under '' E." On this point it is hardly 
fair to make comparison of the present worker 
with the Lowell girl of the first period of fac- 
tory labor, since she came from an educated 
class, and was distinctively American. Taking 
workers as a whole, a vast advance shows itself. 
Regularity and fixed rule have often been the 
first education in this direction; and the life, 
even with all its drawbacks, has the right to be 
regarded as an educational force, and the first 
step in this direction for a large proportion of 
the workers in it. There are points where the 
arraignment of Alfred, in his '^ History of the 
Factory Movement," is still true.^ He speaks 
of it as a *' system which jested with civilization, 
laughed at humanity, and made a mockery of 
every law of physical and moral health and of 
the principles of natural and social order." The 
** Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 

1 Alfred's History of the Factory Movement, vol, i. p. 27. 



94 Women Wage-Earners. 

1885" shows that the charge might still be 
righteously brought; and Mr. Bishop gives the 
same testimony in his reports for New Jersey. 
Evil is still part of the system, and well-nigh 
inseparable from the methods of production and 
the conditions of competition; but that there 
are evils is recognized at all points, and thus 
their continuance will not and cannot be per- 
petuated. 



Rise and Growth of Trades, 95 



IV. 



RISE AND GROWTH OF TRADES UP TO THE 
PRESENT TIME. 

DEFEAT and discouragement attend well- 
nigh every step of the attempt to reach 
any conclusions regarding women workers 
in the early years of the century. It is true 
that 1832 witnessed an attempt at an investi- 
gation into their status, but the results were of 
slight value, actual figures being almost unat- 
tainable. The census of 1840 gave more, and 
that of 1850 showed still larger gain. In that 
of 1840 the number of women and children in 
the silk industry was taken; but while the 
same is true of the later one, there is appar- 
ently no record of them in any printed form. 
The New York State Census for the years 
1845 ^^d 1855 gave some space to the work 
of women and children, but there is nothing 
of marked value till another decade had 
passed. 



96 Women Wage-Earners. 

It is to the United States Census for i860 
that we must look for the first really definite 
statements as to the occupations of women and 
children. Scattered returns of an earlier date 
had shown that the percentage of those 
employed in factories was a steadily increasing 
one, but in what ratio was considered as 
unimportant. In fact, statistics of any order 
had small place, nor was their need seriously 
felt, save here and there, in the mind of the 
student. 

To comprehend the blankness of this period 
in all matters relating to social and economic 
questions, it is necessary to recall the fact 
that no such needs as those of the mother 
country pressed upon us. To those who looked 
below the surface and watched the growing 
tide of emigration, it was plain that they were, 
in no distant day, to arise; but for the most 
part, even for those compelled to severest toil, 
it was taken for granted that full support was 
a certainty, and that the men or women who 
did not earn a comfortable living could blame 
no one but themselves. 

There were other reasons why any enumera- 
tion of women workers seemed not only super- 



Rise and Growth of Trades, 97 

fluous but undesirable. For the better order, 
prejudice was still strong enough against all 
who deviated from custom or tradition to make 
each new candidate for a living shrink from 
any publicity that could be avoided. Society 
frowned upon the woman who dared to strike 
out in new paths, and thus made them even 
more thorny than necessity had already done. 

It is impossible for the present, with its full 
freedom of opportunity, to realize, or credit 
even, the difficulties of the past, or even of a 
period hardly more than a generation ago. It 
was of this time that Dr. Emily Blackwell, 
one of the pioneers in higher work for women, 
wrote : — 

^^ Women were hindered at every turn by endless 
restraint in endless minor detail of habit, custom, 
tradition, etc. . . . Most women who have been 
engaged in any new departure would testify that the 
difficulties of the undertaking lay far more in these 
artificial hindrances and burdens than in their own 
health, or in the nature of the work itself." 

It was this shrinking from publicity, among 
all save the most ordinary workers, by this 
time largely foreign, that made one difficulty 
in the way of census enumerators. By i860 it 

7 



98 Women Wage-Earners. 

had become plain that an enormous increase in 
their numbers was taking place, and that no 
just idea of this increase could be formed so 
long as industrial statistics were made up with 
no distinction as to sex. The spread of the 
factory system and the constant invention of 
new machinery had long ago removed from 
homes the few branches of the work that could 
be carried on within them. Processes had 
divided and subdivided. The mill-worker 
knew no longer every phase of the work 
implied in the production of her web, but 
became more and more a part of the machine 
itself. This was especially true of all textile 
industries, — cotton or woollen, with their 
many ramifications, — and becomes more so 
with each year of progress. 

Cotton and woollen manufactures, with the 
constantly increasing subdivisions of all the 
processes involved, counted their thousands 
upon thousands of women workers. Another 
industry had been one of the first opened to 
women, much of its work being done at home. 
Shoemaking, with all its processes of binding 
and finishing, had its origin for this country 
in Massachusetts, to the ingenuity and enter- 



Rise and Growth of Trades. 99 

prise of whose mechanics is due the fact that 
the United States has attained the highest 
perfection in this branch. Lynn, Mass., as far 
back as 1750, had become famous for its 
women's shoes, the making of which was car- 
ried on in the families of the manufacturers. 
At first no especial skill was shown; but in 
1750 a Welsh shoemaker, named John Adam 
Dagyr, settled there and acquired great fame 
for himself and the town for his superior work- 
manship. In 1788 the exports of women's 
shoes from Lynn were one hundred thousand 
pairs, while in 1795 over three hundred thou- 
sand pairs were sent out, and by 1870 the 
number had reached eleven million. 

Beginning with the employment of a few 
dozen women, twenty other towns took up the 
same industry, and furnish their quota of the 
general return. The Massachusetts Bureau of 
Labor gives, in its report for 1873, the number 
of women employed as 11,193, with some six 
hundred female children. Maine and New 
Hampshire followed, and both have a small pro- 
portion of women workers engaged in the 
industry, while it has gradually extended. New 
England always retaining the lead, till New 



lOO Women Wage-Earners. 

York, Philadelphia, and many Western and 
Southern towns rank high in the list of 
producers. 

As in every other trade, processes have 
divided and subdivided. Sewing-machines 
did away with the tedious binding by hand, 
which had its compensations, however, in the 
fact that it was done at home. There is only 
incidental record of the numbers employed in 
this industry till the later census returns; but 
the percentage outside of Massachusetts re- 
mained a very small one, as even in Maine the 
total number given in the Report of the Bureau 
of Labor for 1887 is but 533, an almost inap- 
preciable per cent of the population The 
returns of the census of 1880 give the total 
number of women in this employment as 
21,000, the proportion still remaining largest 
for New England. 

Straw-braiding was another of the early 
trades, and the first straw bonnet braided in the 
United States was made by Miss Betsey Metcalf, 
of Providence, R. I., in 1789. For many years 
straw-plaiting was done at home; but the 
quality of our material was always inferior to 
that grown abroad, our climate making it much 



Rise and Growth of Trades, loi 

more brittle and difficult to handle. The wage 
at first was from two to three dollars a week; 
but as factories were established where im- 
ported braid was made up, the sum sometimes 
reached five dollars. The census of i860 gave 
the total number of women employed as 1,430. 
According to the census of 1870, nine States 
had taken up this industry, Massachusetts em- 
ploying the largest number, and Vermont the 
least, the total number being 12,594; while 
in 1880 the number had risen to 19,998. 

Up to the time of the Civil War, aside from 
factory employments, the trades open to women 
were limited, and the majority of their occupa- 
, tions were still carried on at home, or with but 
few in numbers, as* in dressmaking-establish- 
ments, millinery, and the like. With the new 
conditions brought about at this time, and the 
vast number of women thrown upon their own 
resources, came the flocking into trades for 
which there had been no training, and which 
had been considered as the exclusive property 
of men. A surplus of untrained workers at 
once appeared, and this and general financial 
depression brought the wage to its lowest 
terms; but when this had in part ended, the 



I02 Women Wage-Earners. 

trades still remained open. At the close of 
the war some hundred were regarded as prac- 
ticable. Ten years later the number had more 
than doubled, and to-day we find over four 
hundred occupations; while, as new inventions 
arise, the number of possibilities in this direc- 
tion steadily increases. The many considera- 
tions involved in these facts will be met later 
on. General conditions of trades as a whole 
are given in the census returns, though even 
there hardly more than approximately, little 
work of much real value being accomplished 
till the formation of the labor bureaus, with 
which we are soon to deal. Every allowance, 
however, is to be made for the Census Bureau, 
which found itself almost incapable of over- 
coming many of the lions in the way. The tone 
of the remarks on this point in that for i860 is 
almost plaintive, nor is it less so in the next; 
but methods have clarified, and the work is 
far more authoritative than for long seemed 
possible. 

Innumerable difficulties hedged about the 
enumerators for i860. Rooted objection to 
answering the questions in detail was not one of 
the least. Unfamiliarity with the newer phases 



Rise and Growth of Trades. 103 

of the work was another, and thus it happened 
that the volume when issued was full of dis- 
crepancies. The tables of occupations, for 
example, characterized but a little over two 
thousand persons as connected with woollen 
and worsted manufacture ; while the tables of 
manufactures showed that considerably more 
than forty thousand persons were engaged, 
upon the average, in these branches of manu- 
facturing industry. 

The returns gave the number of women 
employed in various branches of manufacture 
as two hundred and eighty-five thousand, but 
stated that the figures were approximate merely, 
it being impossible to secure full returns. It 
was found that three and a half per cent of the 
population of Massachusetts were in the fac- 
tories, and nearly the same proportion in Con- 
necticut and Rhode Island ; but details were of 
the most meagre description, and conclusions 
based upon them were likely to err at every 
point. Its value was chiefly educative, since 
the failure it represents pointed to a change in 
methods, and more preparation than had at any 
time been considered necessary in the officials 
who had the matter in charge. 



I04 Women Wage- Earners. 

The census for 1870 reaped the benefits of 
the new determination ; yet even of this Gen- 
eral Walker was forced to write : '^ This census 
concludes that from one to two hundred thou- 
sand workers are not accounted for, from the 
difficulty experienced in getting proper returns. 
The nice distinctions of foreign statisticians 
are impossible." And he adds: — 

"Whoever will consider the almost utter want of 
apprenticeship in this country, the facility with which 
pursuits are taken up and abandoned, and the variety 
and, indeed, seeming incongruity of the numerous in- 
dustrial offices that are frequently united in one 
person, will appreciate the force of this argument. . . . 
The organization of domestic service in the United 
States is so crude that no distinction whatever can be 
successfully maintained. A census of occupations in 
which the attempt should be made to reach anything 
like European completeness in this matter would re- 
sult in the return of tens of thousands of ^ house- 
keepers * and hundreds of thousands of ^ cooks,' who 
were simply ^ maids of all work,' being the single ser- 
vants of the famiUes in which they are employed." ^ 

This census gives the total number of women 
workers, so far as it could be determined, as 

1 Remarks on Tables of Occupations, Ninth Census of the 
United States, Population and Social Statistics, p. 663. 



Rise and Growth of Trades. 105 

1,836,288. Of these, 191,000 were from ten 
to fifteen years of age; 1,594,783, from sixteen 
to fifty-nine; and 50,404, sixty years and over, 
the larger proportion of the latter division 
being given as engaged in agricultural 
employments. 

In the first period of age, females pursuing 
gainful occupations are to males as one to 
three; in the second, one to six; and in the 
third, one to twelve. The actual increase over 
the numbers given in the census for i860 is 
1,551,288. The reasons for this almost incre- 
dible variation have already been suggested; 
and their operation became even stronger in 
the interval between that of 1870 and 1880. 
By this time methods were far more skilful 
and returns more minute, and thus the figures 
are to be accepted with more confidence than 
was possible with the earlier ones. The 
factory system, extending into almost every 
trade, brought about more and more differentia- 
tion of occupations, some two hundred of which 
were by 1880 open to women. 

Comparing the rates of increase during the 
period between i860 and 1870, women wage- 
earners had increased 19 per cent, the increase 



1 06 Women Wage-Earners. 

for men being but -^. Among the women, 
6.7 per cent were engaged in agriculture, 33.4 
in personal service, 7.3 in trade and trans- 
portation, and. 16.5 in manufactures. In 1880 
women engaged in gainful occupations formed 
5.28 of the total population, and 14.68 of 
females over ten years of age. The present 
rate is not yet^ determined; but while figures 
will not be accessible for some months to 
come, it is stated definitely that the increase 
will indicate nearer ten than five per cent. 

The total number employed is given for this 
census as 2,647,157. The occupations are 
divided into four classes : first, agriculture; sec- 
ond, professional and personal services; third, 
trade and transportation ; fourth, manufactures, 
mechanical and mining industries. In agricul- 
ture, 594, 510 women were at work; in profes- 
sional and personal services, this including 
domestic service, 1,361,295; trade and trans- 
portation, this including shop-girls, etc., had 
59,364; while 631,988 were engaged in the last 
division of manufacturing, etc. Of girls from 
ten to fifteen years of age, agriculture had 
135,862; professional and personal services, 

1 June, 1893. 



Rise and Growth of Trades. 107 

107,830; trade, 2, 547; and manufacturing, etc. , 
46,930. From sixteen to fifty-nine years of 
age there were in agriculture 435,920; in pro- 
fessional and personal services, 1,215,189; trade 
and transportation, 54,849; and manufacturing, 
etc., 577,157. From sixty years and upward 
the four classes were divided as follows: Agri- 
culture, 22,728; professional, etc., 38,276; 
trade, etc., 1,968; and manufacturing, etc., 
7,901. 

Even for this record numbers must be added, 
since many women work at home and make no 
return of the trade they have chosen, while 
many others are held by pride from admitting 
that they work at all. But the addition of a 
hundred thousand for the entire country would 
undoubtedly cover this discrepancy in full; nor 
are these numbers too large, though it is 
impossible to more than approximate them. 

Suggestive as these figures are, they are still 
more so when we come to their apportionment 
to States. They become then a history of the 
progress of trades, and women's share in them; 
and a glance enables one to determine the pro- 
portion employed in each. In the table which 
follows, industries are condensed under a gen- 



io8 



Women Wage-Earners. 



eral head, no mention being made of the many 
subdivisions, each ranking as a trade, but 
going to make up the business as a whole. It 
is the result of statistics taken in fifty of the 
principal cities, and includes only those indus- 
tries in which women have the largest share. ^ 





Total 
Number. 


Per Cent 
of Males. 


Per Cent 
of 

Females. 


Children. 


Book-binding .... 


IO,6l2 


4,831 


4,553 


616 


Carpet-weaving . . . 


20,371 


4,960 


4,207 


833 


Men's Clothing . . . 


160,813 


4,801 


5,037 


159 


Women's Clothing . . 


25,192 


1,030 


8,833 


'^Zl 


Cotton Goods .... 


185,472 


3457 


4,914 


1,629 


Men's Furnishing Goods 


11,174 


1,140 


8,560 


300 


Hosiery and Knitting . 


28,885 


2,602 


6,130 


1,268 


Millinery and Lace . . 


25,687 


1,120 


8,637 


243 


Shirts 


6,555 


1,481 


8,000 


513 


Silk and Silk Goods 


31,337 


2,992 


5,232 


1,776 


Straw Goods .... 


10,948 


2,991 


6,850 


154 


Tobacco 


32,756 


4,544 


3,290 


2,166 


Umbrellas and Canes . 


3,608 


4,169 


5,152 


679 


Woollen Goods . . . 


86,504 


54,544 


3»395 


1,174 


Worsted Goods . . . 


18,800 


5,431 


5,038 


1,540 



In obtaining these averages, it was found 
necessary to equalize the returns of Pittsburg 
and Philadelphia, the former having but 4.55 



1 The table is copied with minute care from that given in 
the last census ; and while it shows one or two deficiencies, 
the writer is in no sense responsible for them, its accuracy, as a 
whole, not being affected by the slight discrepancy referred to. 



Rise and Growth of Trades, 109 

per cent of women workers, while Philadelphia 
had 31. This resulted from the fact that the 
industries of Philadelphia are the manufactur- 
ing of textiles and other goods, which employ- 
women chiefly; while Pittsburg has principally 
iron and steel mills. New York was found to 
have 31 per cent of women workers ; Lowell, 
Mass., had 47.42, and Manchester, N. H., 53; 
Pittsburg and Wilmington, Del., having the 
lowest percentage. 

The gain of women in trades over the census 
of 1870 was sixty-four per cent, the total per- 
centage of women workers for the whole coun- 
try being forty-nine. The ten years just 
ended show a still larger percentage ; and many 
of the trades which a decade since still hesi- 
tated to admit women, are now open, those , 
regarded as most peculiarly the province of 
men having received many feminine recruits. 
These isolated or scattered instances hardly 
belong here, and are mentioned simply as indi- 
cations of the general trend. Wise or unwise, 
experiment is the order of the day, its principal 
service in many cases being to test untried 
powers, and break down barriers, built up often 



I lO 



Women Wage-Earners. 



by mere tradition, and not again to rise till 
women themselves decide when and where. 

Taking States in their alphabetical order, 
the census of 1880 gives the number of working- 
women for each as follows : ^ — 



Alabama, 124,056. 
Arkansas, 30,616. 
California, 28,200. 
Colorado, 4,779. 
Connecticut, 48,670. 
Delaware, 7,928. 
Florida, 17,781. 
Georgia, 152,322. 
Illinois, 106,101. 
Indiana, 51,422. 
Iowa, 44.845- 
Kansas, 54,422. 
Louisiana, 95,052. 
Maine, 33,528. 
Massachusetts, 174,183. 
Michigan, 55,013. 
Minnesota, 25,077. 
Mississippi, 110,416. 
Missouri, 62,943. 
Nebraska, 10,455. 
Nevada, 403. 
New Hampshire, 30,128. 



New Jersey, 66,776. 

New York, 360,381. 

North Carolina, 86,976. 

Ohio, 112,639. 

Oregon, 2,779. 

Pennsylvania,. 216,980. 

Rhode Island, 29,859. 

South Carolina, 120,087. 

Tennessee, 56,408. 

Texas, 58,943. 

Vermont, 16,167. 

West Virginia, 11,508. 

Wisconsin, 46,395. 

Arizona, 471. 

Dakota, 2,851. 

District of Columbia, 19,658. 

Idaho, 291. 

Montana, 507. 

New Mexico, 2,262. 

Utah, 2,877. 

Washington Territory, 1,060. 

Wyoming, 464. 



1 The tables in this department of the census for 1890 are 
not yet ready for the public ; but the department states that the 
increase in women wage-earners averages about ten per cent. 



Labor Bureaus, iii 



V- 



LABOR BUREAUS AND THEIR WORK IN 
RELATION TO WOMEN. 

THE difficulties encountered by the enumer- 
ators of the United States Census, and the 
growing conviction that much more minute and 
organized effort must be given if the real 
status of women workers was to be obtained, 
had already been matter of grave discussion. 
The labor question pressed upon all who looked 
below the surface of affairs; and very shortly 
after the census of i860 a proposition was made 
in Boston to establish there a formal bur*eau of 
labor, whose business should be to fill in all 
the blanks that in the general work were passed 
over. 

Many facts, all pointing to the necessity of 
some such organization, lay before the men 
who pondered the matter, — factory abuses of 
many orders, the startling increase of pauper- 
ism and crime, with other causes which can 
find small space here. With difficulty consent 



112 Women Wage- Earners. 

was obtained to establish a bureau which should 
inquire into the causes of all this ; and the first 
report was given to the public in 1870. It was 
descriptive rather than statistical, and necessa- 
rily so. Methods were still a matter of question 
and experiment. The public had small interest 
in the project, and it was essential to outline, 
not only the work to be done, but the reasons 
for its need. 

Naturally, then, the volume touched upon 
many abuses, — children in factories, and the 
factory system as a whole; the homes of 
workers, and their needs in sanitary and other 
directions; and toward the end a few pages of 
special comment on the hard lives of working- 
women as a whole. 

The report for 1871 followed the same lines, 
giving more detail to each. That for 1872 took 
up various phases of women's work,^ with some 
of the general conditions then existing. For 
the following year elaborate tables of the cost 
of living were given, and are invaluable as mat- 
ters of reference; and in 1874 came a no less 
important contribution to social science in the 
report on the *^ Homes of Working-People." 

1 Report for 1872, pp. 59-108. 



Labor Bureaus, 1 1 3 

Those of working-women were of course in- 
cluded, but there was still no description of 
many of the conditions known to hedge them 
about. Each inquiry, however, turned atten- 
tion more and more in this direction, and 
emphasized the need of some work given 
exclusively to women workers. 

In 1875 attention was directed to the health 
of working-women, and a portion of the report 
was devoted to the special effects of certain 
forms of employment upon the health of 
women, ^ the education of children, the con- 
ditions of families, etc. That for 1876 dis- 
cussed the question of wives' earnings, and 
gave tables of what proportion they made ; and 
that for 1877 took up "Pauperism and Crime,'' 
in the growing amount of which it was claimed 
by many that the worker had large share. 

In 1878 large space was given to education 
and the work of the young, for whom the half- 
time system was urged. The conjugal condi- 
tion of wives and mothers was also considered, 
and the bearing of their work upon the home. 
The financial distress of the period had affected 
wages, and the report for 1879 considered the 

1 Report for 1875, PP- 67-112. 
8 



1 1 4 Women Wage-Earners, 

effect of this, with the condition of the " unem- 
ployed," the tramp question, and other phases 
of the problem. With 1880 and the ending of 
the first decade of work in this direction came 
a fuller report on the social life of working- 
men and the divorces in Massachusetts; 1881 
made a plea for uniform hours, and 1882 
was devoted to wages, prices, and profits, and 
further details of the life of operatives within 
their homes; and 1883 found reason again to 
go over the question of wages and prices. 

I have given this detail because, when one 
views the work of the bureau as a whole, it will 
be seen that each year formed one step toward 
the final result, which has been of most vital 
bearing upon all since accomplished in the 
same direction for women. Until the appear- 
ance of the report for 1884, on the "Working- 
Girls of Boston," there had been no absolute 
and authoritative knowledge as to their lives, 
their earnings, and their status as a whole. 
Their numbers were equally unknown, nor was 
there interest in their condition, save here and 
there among special students of social science. 
On the other hand there was a popular impres- 
sion that the ranks of prostitution were re- 



Labor Bureaus. 1 1 5 

cruited from the manufactory, and that a 
certain stigma necessarily rested upon the 
factory-worker and indeed upon working-girls 
as a class. 

Six divisions had been found essential to the 
thorough handling of the subject; and these 
divisions have formed the basis of all work 
since done in the same lines, whether in State 
bureaus or in that of the United States, soon 
to find mention here. It was under the direc- 
tion of Colonel Carroll D. Wright that the 
Massachusetts Bureau did its careful and scien- 
tific work; and he represents the most valuable 
labor in this direction that the country has 
had, deserving to rank in this matter, as Tench 
Coxe still does in the manufacturing system, 
as the " Father " of the labor-bureau system. 

The six divisions settled upon as essential 
to any general system of reports were as 
follows : — 

I. Social Condition. 



Occupations, Places in which Employed. 
Hours of Labor, Time Lost, etc. 
Physical and Sanitary Condition. 
Economic Condition. 
Moral Condition. 



1 1 6 Women Wage- Earners. 

The Tenth Census of the United States gave 
the number of women employed in the city of 
Boston as 38,881, 20,000 of whom were in 
occupations other than domestic service. 
Each year, as we have already seen, had 
touched more and more nearly upon the facts 
bound up in their lives, but it had become 
necessary to determine with an accuracy that 
could not be brought in question precisely the 
facts given under the six headings. To the 
surprise of the special agents detailed for this 
work, who had anticipated disagreeables of 
every order, the girls themselves took the 
liveliest interest in the matter, answered ques- 
tions freely, and gave every facility for the 
fullest searching into each phase involved. 
American girls were found to form but 22.3 
per cent of the whole number of working- 
women in Massachusetts, of whom but 58.4 
per cent had been born in that State. 

The results reached in this report may be 
regarded as a summary, not only of condi- 
tions for Boston, but for all the large manu- 
facturing towns of New England, later inquiry 
justifying this conclusion. 

The average age of working -girls was found 



Labor Bureaus. 1 1 7 

to be 24.81 years, and the average at which 
they began work, 16.81 ; the average time actu- 
ally at work, 7.49 years, and the average num- 
ber of occupations followed 178, the time spent 
in each being 4.43 years. Of the whole, 85 
per cent were found to do their own housework 
and sewing, either wholly or in part. 

But 22 per cent were allowed any vacation, 
and but 3.9 per cent received pay during that 
time, the average vacation being 1.87 weeks. 
A little over 26 per cent worked the full year 
without loss of time, while an average of 12.32 
weeks was lost by 73 per cent. The average 
time worked by all during the year was 42.95 
weeks. In personal service 26. 5 per cent worked 
more than ten hours a day; in trade, 19.5 per 
cent were so em^ployed, and in manufactures 
5.6 per cent. In all occupations 8.9 per cent 
worked more than ten hours a day, and 8.6 per 
cent more than sixty hours a week. 

In the matter of health ^6. 2 per cent of the 
whole number employed were in good health. 

The average weekly earnings for the average 
time employed, 42.95 weeks, was ^6.01, and 
the average weekly earnings of all the working- 
girls of Boston for a whole year were ^4.91. 



1 1 8 Women Wage-Ear7iers. 

The average weekly income, including earn- 
ings, assistance, and income from extra work 
done by many, was $5.17 a year. 

The average yearly income from all sources 
was $269.70, and the average yearly expenses 
for positive needs $261.30, leaving but $7.77y 
on the average, as a margin for books, amuse- 
ments, etc. Those making savings are 1 1 per 
cent of the whole, their average savings being 
$72. 15 per year. A few run in debt, the aver- 
age debt being $36.60 for the less than 3 per 
cent incurring debt. 

Of the total average yearly expenses, these 
percentages being based upon the law laid 
down by Dr. Engels of Prussia, as to percen- 
tage of expenses belonging to subsistence, 
63 per cent must be expended for food and 
lodging, and 25 per cent for clothing, — a total 
of 88 per cent of total expenses for subsistence 
and clothing, leaving but 12 per cent of total 
expense to be distributed to the other needs of 
living. 

These are, briefly summed up, the results of 
the investigation, in which the single workers 
constituted 88.9 of the whole, and the married 
but 6 per cent, widows making up the number. 



Labor Bureaus. 119 

It is impossible in these limits to give further 
detail on these points, all readers being re- 
ferred to the report itself. 

The same questions that had first sought 
answer in New England were even more press- 
ing in New York. As in most subjects of 
deep popular or scientific importance, the 
sense of need for more data by which to judge 
seemed in the air; and already the Labor Bureau 
of the State of New York, under the efficient 
guidance of Mr. Charles F. Peck, had begun a 
course of inquiries of the same nature. For 
years, beginning with the New York " Tribune, '' 
in the days when Margaret Fuller worked for 
it and touched at times upon social questions, 
— always in the mind of Horace Greeley, its 
founder, — there had been periodical stirs of 
feeling in behalf of sewing-women. It was 
known that the enormous influx of foreign 
labor naturally massed at this point, more 
than could ever be possible elsewhere, had 
brought with it evils suspected, but still not 
yet defined in any sense to be trusted. Indi- 
cations on the surface were seriously bad, but 
actual investigation had never tested their na- 
ture or degree. The report of the bureau for 



1 20 Women Wage-Earners. 

1885, which was given to the public in 1886, 
met with a degree of interest and study not 
usually accorded these volumes, and roused 
public feeling to an unexpected extent. 

Mr. Peck brought to the work much the 
same order of interest that had marked that of 
Colonel Wright, and wrote in his introduction 
to the report the summary of the situation for 
New York City: — 

'^ By reason of its immense population, its numer- 
ous and extensive manufactures, its wealth, its poverty, 
and general cosmopolitan character, New York City 
presents a field for investigation into the subject of 
' Working- Women, their Trades, Wages, Home and 
Social Conditions,' unequalled by any other centre of 
population in America. It opens up a wider and 
more diversified field for inquiry, study, and classifi- 
cation of the various industries in which women seek 
employment, than can be found even in European 
cities, with but few if any exceptions. It is for such 
reasons that the inquiry of the bureau into this special 
subject has been largely confined to the city named." 

Two hundred and forty-seven trades are 
given in this report, in which some two hun- 
dred thousand women were found to be engaged, 
this being exclusive of domestic service. The 



Labor Bureaus. 121 

divisions of the subject were substantially those 
adopted by the Massachusetts Bureau ; but the 
numbers and complexity of conditions made 
the inquiry far more difficult. Its results and 
their bearings will find place later on. It is 
sufficient now to say that the two may be 
regarded as summarizing all phases of work for 
women, and as an index to the difficulties at 
all other points in the country. 

The Bureau of Labor for Connecticut sent 
out its first report in the same year (1885), and 
included investigations and statistics in the 
same lines, though, for reasons specified, in 
much more limited degree. That for 1886 for 
the same State took up in detail some points in 
regard to the work of both women and children, 
which, for want of both time and space, had 
been omitted in the first, their returns coincid,- 
ing in all important particulars with those of 
the other bureaus. 

In 1886 the California Bureau of Labor 
touched the same points, but only incidentally, 
in its general analysis of the labor question. 
In the following year, however, the report 
covering the years 1887 and 1888 took up the 
question under the same aspects as those han- 



12 2 Women Wage-Earners, 

died in the special reports on this topic, and 
gave full treatment of the wages, lives, and 
general conditions for working-women. It 
included, also, the facts, so far as they could 
be ascertained, of the nature, wages, and con- 
ditions of domestic service in California, — the 
first attempt at treating this difficult subject 
with any accuracy. The apprentice system, 
and an important chapter on manual training 
and its bearings make this report one of the 
most valuable, from the social point of view, 
that has been given, though where all are 
invaluable it is hard to characterize one above 
another. 

Mr. Tobin, for California, and Mr. Hutchins, 
for Iowa, seemed moved at the same time in 
much the same way, — the Iowa report for 1887 
treating the many questions involved with that 
largeness which has thus far distinguished 
work in this direction. Kansas, in the report 
for 1888, gave general conditions, women 
being treated incidentally; and Minnesota, in 
the report for the years 1887 and 1888, gave a 
chapter on working-women, wages, etc. 

Colorado followed, giving in the report for 
1887 and 1888, under the management of Com- 



Labor Bureaus. 123 

missioner Rice, a chapter on women wage- 
workers, in which space is given to certified 
complaints of the women themselves, as to 
what they consider the disabilities of their 
special trades. Domestic service, with some 
of its abuses, was also considered, and is of 
much value. These reports sum up the work 
so far done in the West, where labor bureaus 
are of recent growth. The spirit of inquiry is, 
however, equally alive; and each year will see 
minuter detail and a deeper scientific spirit. 

Maine, in the report for 1888, took up many 
questions of general interest, with their inci- 
dental bearings on the work of women ; and in 
1889 came another report from Kansas, in 
which the labor commissioner, Mr. Frank 
Betton, gave large space to an investigation 
conducted under many difficulties, but covering 
the ground very fully. A very full report from 
Michigan, under Commissioner Henry A. Rob- 
inson, was issued in 1892, nearly two hundred 
pages being given to an exhaustive examina- 
tion into the conditions of women wage-earners 
in the State, its methods owing much to the 
work which had preceded it. 

With this background of admirable work 



124 Women Wage- Earners. 

always, no matter what might be the limita- 
tions, making each report a little broader in 
purpose and minuter in detail, the way was 
plain for something even more comprehensive. 
This was furnished by the Bureau of Labor of 
the United States, which had changed its name, 
and become, in June, 1887, the Department of 
Labor, a part of the Department of the Inte- 
rior. This report — the fourth from the bureau, 
and issued in 1888 — was entitled '* Working- 
Women in Large Cities," and included inves- 
tigations made in twenty-two cities, from 
Boston to San Francisco and San Jos6. 

All that long experience had demonstrated 
as most important in such work was brought 
to bear. The investigation covered manual 
labor in cities, excluding textile industries, 
save incidentally as these had already been 
treated, as well as domestic service. Textile 
factories are usually outside of large cities, and 
it was the object to discover the opportunities 
of employment in the way of manual labor in 
cities themselves. 

Three hundred and forty-three distinct indus- 
tries showed themselves, and others were found 
which were not included, it being safe to say 



Labor Bureaus. 125 

that some four hundred may be considered 
open to women. As before stated, many are 
simply subdivisions, made by the constantly 
increasing complexity of machinery. The 
agents of the department carried their work 
into the lowest and worst places in the cities 
named, because in such places are to be found 
women who are struggling for a livelihood in 
most respectable callings, — living in them as 
a matter of necessity, since they cannot afford 
to live otherwise, but leaving them whenever 
wages are sufficient to admit of change. 

It is this report which forms the summary 
of all the work that has preceded it, and that 
gives the truest exponent of all present condi- 
tions. It is only necessary to add to it the 
summaries of the State reports at other points, 
to see the aspect of the question as a whole; 
and thus we are ready to consider by its aid the 
general rates of wages and of the status of the 
trades of every nature in which women are now 
engaged. 



126 Women Wage-Earners. 



VI. 

PRESENT WAGE-RATES IN THE UNITED STATES. 

UNDER this heading it is proposed to 
include, not only the trades just speci- 
fied as coming under the investigations recorded 
in " Working- Women in Large Cities/' but 
also such data as can be gleaned from all the 
labor reports which have given any attention 
to this phase of the labor question. Naturally, 
then, we turn to the report of the Massachu- 
setts Bureau for 1881, the first statement of 
these points, and compare it with the results 
obtained in the last report from Washington, 
as well as with the returns from the various 
States where investigation of the question has 
been made. 

Exceptionally favorable conditions would 
seem to belong to the year in which the report 
for 1884 appeared. The financial distress of 
1877, with its results, had passed. New indus- 
tries of many orders had opened up for women, 



Present Wage-Rates. 127 

and trade in all its forms called for workers 
and gave almost constant employ, save in the 
few occupations which have a distinct season, 
and oblige those engaged in them to divide 
their time between two if a living is assured. 

A distinction must at once be made in the 
definition of earnings. In speaking of them, 
there are necessarily three designations, — 
wages, earnings, and income. Wages repre- 
sent the actual pay per week at the time 
employed, with no reference to the number of 
weeks' employment during the year. Earnings 
are the total receipts for any year from wages. 
Thus, for example, a girl is paid ^5 a week 
wages, and works forty weeks of her year. 
Her earnings would then be for the year ;^200, 
though her wages of ^5 per week would indi- 
cate that she earned $260 a year; while in fact 
her average weekly earnings would be for the 
whole year $3.84. Income is her total receipts 
for the year from all sources: wages, extra 
work, help from friends or from investments; 
in fact, any receipts from which expenses can 
be paid. 

In preparing the tables of these reports, the 
highest, the lowest, the average, and the gen- 



128 Women Wage- Earners. 

eral average were brought into a final compari- 
son. Often but one wage is given, and it 
then becomes naturally both highest and low- 
est; but all figures are made to indicate an 
entire occupation or branch of industry, and 
not a few high or low paid employees in that 
branch. It is only with the final comparison 
that we are able to deal, the reader being 
referred to the reports themselves for the 
invaluable details given at full length and 
including many hundred pages. 

The divisions of occupations are the same 
as those of the tenth census, and the tables are 
made on the same system. To determine the 
general conditions for the twenty thousand at 
work, it was necessary to have accurate detail 
as to one thousand; and, in fact, 1,032 were 
interviewed. Directly after the work in this 
direction had ended, and before the report was 
ready for publication, a general reduction of 
ten per cent in wages took place, and this must 
be kept in mind in dealing with the returns 
recorded. In this, recapitulation is given in 
full, and, as will be seen, includes all occupa- 
tions open to women. 



Present Wage-Rates. 



129 



RECAPITULATION. 





Boston. 


Other Parts 
OF Mass. 


Other 
States. 






Average 

Weekly 

Earnings. 


s 

3 


Average 
Weekly 
Earnings, 


V.' 

S 

1 


Average 

Weekly 

Earnings. 


Government and professional 
Domestic and personal office 
Trade and transportation • . 
Manufactures and mechanical 
industries 


7 
178 
221 

1,293 


^5 57 
5 94 
5 00 

622 


5 
27 

4 
72 


% 40 

5 33 
925 

7 06 


10 
21 

4 

49 


$628 
469 
725 

758 


All occupations ..... 


1,699 


$6 03 


108 


^6 68 


84 


^669 



The commissioners of the New York State 
Bureau of Labor followed a slightly different 
method. The returns are no less minute, but 
are given under the heading of each trade, two 
hundred and forty-seven of which were inves- 
tigated. The wages of workwomen for the 
entire year run from ;^3. 50 to ^4 a week, the 
general average not being given, though later 
returns make it ^5.85. This is, however, for 
skilled labor; and as a vast proportion of 
women workers in New York City are engaged 
in sewing, the poorest paid of all industries, 
we must accept the first figures as nearer the 
truth. An expert on shirts receives as high 

9 



1 30 Women Wage-Earners. 

as ^12 a week, in some cases ^15; but in slop 
work, and under the sweating-system, wages 
fall to $2. 50 or ^3 per week, and at times less. 
Mr. Peck found cloakmakers working on the 
most expensive and perfectly finished garments 
for 40 cents a day, a full day's pay being from 
50 to 60 cents. ^ In other cases a day's work 
brought in but 25 cents, and seventeen over- 
alls of blue denim gave a return of 75 cents 
Two and a half cents each is paid for the mak- 
ing of boys' gingham waists, with trimming on 
neck and sleeves, including the button-holes; 
and the women who made these sat sixteen 
hours at the sewing-machine, with a result of 
25 cents. ^ 

This was for irregular work. Women em- 
ployed on clothing in general, working for 
reputable firms, receive from ^4. 50 to $6 per 
week. In the tobacco manufacture, in which 
great numbers are employed, $(^ is the lowest 
actual earnings, and $20 the highest per week. 
In cigarettes, the pay ranges from ^4 to ;^i5 

1 Third Annual Report of New York Bureau of Labor, 
p. 162. These are Mr. Peck's figures ; but the United States 
report gives the average for skilled labor as $5.85 per week, 
and adds that the unskilled earns far less. 

2 Ibid. p. 165. 



Present Wage-Rates. 131 

per week. In dry -goods, with ten divisions of 
employment, — cashiers, bundle-girls, sales- 
women, floor-walkers, seamstresses, cloak- 
makers, cash-girls, stock-girls, milliners, and 
sewing-girls, — the lowest sum per week is 
^1.50, paid to cash-girls, and the highest paid 
to floor-walkers, $16, On the east side of the 
city, shop girls receive often as low as ^3 per 
week; in a few cases specified, ^2.50 per 
week.i 

In laundry- work, which includes several 
divisions, wages weekly range from ^7.50 to 
;^io, though ironers of special excellence some- 
times make from ^12 to ^15 per week. In 
millinery the wages are from $6 to $y per week. 
In preserving and fruit-canning wages are 
from ^3.50 to $10, the average worker earning 
about ^5 per week. Mr. Peck states that in 
fashion trades the two distinct seasons bring 
the year's earnings to about six months. 
" Learners '' in the trades coming under this 
head receive ^1.50 per week. Saleswomen 
suffer also from season trade, as it necessitates 
reduction of force. The better class of workers 

1 New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Third Annual 
Report, p. 27. 



132 Women Wage- Earners. 

receive from J^8 to ^15 per week, while heads 
of departments range from $25 to J?5o, or even 
higher, for exceptional merit. These cases 
are of the rarest, however, the v^age as an 
average falling below that of l^oston. 

]}ut three State reports cover the same dates 
as these already quoted (1885 and 1886), — 
Connecticut, New Jersey, and California, the 
former being for 1885. In this, women's 
wages are given incidentally in general tables, 
and must be disentangled to find any average. 
In artificial flowers the highest wage is given 
as $7, and the lowest $3, the average being ^5. 
In blankets and woollen goods the highest is 
jSi2. 50 and the lowest J^6, an average of ^9 per 
week. In factory work of all orders, wages 
range from Jf56 to Jf^Q. 75 per week, the average 
paid to women and girls being $j. 50 per week. 
In clothing, including underwear, wages are 
from $1 to JS15 per week, and the average 
annual income of women in these trades is 
given as Jf^soo per year. In cloakmaking the 
lowest wage is Jf53, the highest $9, and the 
average $7. 50. The average wage for San 
Francisco is given as 5(^6.95, and that for the 
whole State is about $6. 



Present Wage-Rates. 133 

The Connecticut report for 1885 gives 
simply the yearly wage in various trades. 
Reason for this is found in the fact that it 
was the first, and could thus deal with the 
subject only tentatively. Clothing is given 
as producing for women a yearly average 
of ^229, and shirts $237. Factory work 
gave $20J, paper boxes $227, and woollen 
goods ;^24S. 

In the report for 1886, the lowest average 
wage is reported as found in the making of 
wearing apparel ; but the average for the State 
was found to be a trifle over $6. 50 per week. 

The report from New Jersey makes the low- 
est wages ;^3 per week, and the highest ^10, 
the average being ^5. This report covers 
ground more fully and in more varied direc- 
tions than any one of the same period, though 
there is only incidental reference to the work 
of women as a whole, the returns being given 
in the general tables of wages. Wages and 
the cost of living are compared, and the chap- 
ter under this head is one of the most valuable 
in the summary of reports as a whole. The 
report for 1886 gives the same general average 
of wages for the State, but adds an exhaustive 



1 34 Women Wage-Earners. 

treatment of "Earnings, Cost of Living, and 
Prices/' 

Maine sent out its first annual report in 1887, 
and gives the wages of women workers as $3. 58 
for the lowest, and ^15.20 for the highest, the 
annual earnings ranging from ^104 to $520. 
The report from the same State for 1889 takes 
up the subject of working-women in detail, 
giving their home or boarding conditions, 
sanitary conditions, their own remarks on 
trades, wages, etc., and the aspect of their 
labor as a whole. The average wage remains 
the same. 

Rhode Island, in its Third Annual Report 
for 1889, under the direction of Commissioner 
Almon K. Goodwin, gives the average wage 
for the State as ^5.87, and devotes the bulk of 
its space to working-women, with full returns 
from the entire State. 

For the same year California, by its labor 
commissioner, Mr. John J. Tobin, gives an 
equally exhaustive statement of the conditions 
of women wage-earners in that State. The 
lowest weekly wage given is ^5, and the high- 
est ^11. Plain cooks receive from $25 to ^40 
a month with board and lodging, and domestic 



Present Wage-Rates. 135 

servants from ^15 to $25 with board. In 
cloak-making the lowest wage is ^3, and the 
highest ^7.50; and in shirt-making the lowest 
is $2, 50, and the highest $6, General cloth- 
ing and underwear range from $\, 50 to $6, and 
other trades average a trifle higher wage than 
in New England. The chapter on domestic 
service is suggestive and important, and the 
whole treatment makes the report a necessity 
to all who would understand the situation in 
detail. This, however, is so true of all that 
have touched upon the subject that it appears 
invidious to single out any one alone. They 
must be taken together. With each year the 
scientific value of each increases, and there 
appears to be distinct emulation among the 
commissioners as to which shall embody the 
most in the returns made and the general 
treatment of the whole. 

The first report from Colorado, issued in 1888, 
Mr. James Rice commissioner, devotes a chap- 
ter to women wage-earners, with an additional 
one on domestic service and its drawbacks. 
The average wage for the State is given as 
$6\ and the commissioner states that notwith- 
standing the general impression that higher 



1 36 Women Wage-Earners. 

wages are paid in Colorado than at any other 
point save California, actual returns show that 
the average sums in several occupations are 
less than that paid to persons similarly em- 
ployed in cities along the Atlantic seaboard. 

Kansas, in its fifth annual report issued in 
1889, gives a section to working-women. The 
commissioner, Mr. Frank Betton, considers 
the returns imperfect, great difficulty having 
been experienced in securing them. The aver- 
age weekly wage is given as $5. 17. Expenses 
are carefully analyzed, and there is a report of 
the remarks of employers, as well as from a 
number of those employed. 

In the report from Iowa for 1887, Commis- 
sioner Hutchins laments that so few women 
have been willing to fill out blanks of returns. 
The wage returns given range from ^3.75 to 
^9. The report for 1889 niakes mention of 
continued difficulties in securing returns, and 
gives the annual earnings of women as from 
^100 to ^440. The tables include cost of 
living and many other essential particulars. 

Wisconsin, in the report for 1884, has 
a chapter on working-girls. It gives the aver- 
age weekly income in personal services as 



Present Wage- Rates. 137 

^^5.25; in trade, ^4.18; in manufactures, ^5.22, 
and the general average for the year as $5. 17. 

Minnesota, whose first report, under the 
supervision of Commissioner John Lamb, ap- 
peared in 1888 for the years 1887 and 1888, 
found little or no room for statistics, but 
included a chapter on working-women, with a 
few admirable tables of age, nativity, home and 
working conditions, etc. Minute inquiry was 
made as to cost of living, clothing, etc. ; and 
the results form a chapter of painful interest, 
that on domestic service being equally sugges- 
tive. Clothing, as usual, represents the lowest 
average wage, $3.66 per week, the highest 
being ^8.50, and the general average a trifle 
over $6. 

Michigan, in 1890, under its labor commis- 
sioner, Mr. Henry A. Robinson, added to the 
list one of the most thorough studies yet made 
of general conditions. The agents of the 
bureau, trained for the work, made personal 
visits to working-women and girls to the num- 
ber of 13,436, this representing one hundred 
and thirty-seven distinct industries and three 
hundred and seventy-eight occupations. The 
blanks prepared for filling out contained one 



138 Women Wage- Earners. 

hundred and twenty-nine questions, classified as 
follows: Social, 28; industrial, 12; hours of 
labor, 14; economic, 54; sanitary, 21, with seven 
others as to dress, societies, church attendance, 
with remarks and suggestions from the workers 
themselves. As usual, in such cases, employers 
here and there objected to any investigation, 
fearing labor organizations were at the bottom 
of it; but the majority allowed free examina- 
tion. The report is very full, and gives a clear 
and full view of the individual lives of this 
body of women workers. The average wage 
proved to be ^4.81 per week, the average 
income for the year being $216.45. The aver- 
age income of teachers and those in public 
positions was $457.27. 

This is the showing. State by State, so far as 
bureaus have reported. Many States have made 
no move in this direction ; but interest is now 
thoroughly aroused, and the subject is likely 
to find treatment in all, this depending some- 
what, however, on the character of the State 
industries and the numbers at work in each. 
Manufacturing necessarily brings with it con- 
ditions that in the end compel inquiry; and 
for most of the Southern States such industries 



Present Wage-Rates^ 



139 



are still new, while the West has not yet found 
the same occasion as the East for full knowl- 
edge of the problems involved in woman's work 
and wages. 

We come now to the most elaborate and far- 
reaching inquiry yet made, — the work of the 
United States Bureau of Labor under Com- 
missioner Wright, entitled " Working- Women 
in Large Cities/' Twenty-two of these are 
reported upon after one of the most rigorous 
examinations ever undertaken; and the aver- 
age wage of each tallies with the rates given 
in the States to which they belong Taken 
alphabetically, the list is as follows: — 

AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS, BY CITIES. 



Atlanta 

Baltimore .... 


. $4.95 
4.18 


Boston 

Brooklyn .... 

Buffalo 

Charleston, S. C. 


5.64 
576 
4.27 
4.22 


Chicago 

Cincinnati .... 
Cleveland .... 


574 
4.50 

4-63 


Indianapolis . . . 
Louisville 


4-57 
4-51 


Newark 


5.20 



New Orleans 






*4-3i 


New York 






5-85 


Philadelphia . , 






5-34 


Providence . 






5-51 


Richmond 






3-83 


St. Louis . . 






5.19 


St. Paul . . 






6.62 


San Francisco 






6.91 


San Jose . . 






6.1 1 


Savannah . . 






4.90 


All Cities . 






5-24 



In addition to these figures, it seems well to 
give the average yearly earnings of women in 



140 Women Wage- Earners. 

some of the most profitable industries, those 
being chosen which are seldom affected by 
"seasons " : — 

Artificial flowers, ^277.53; awnings and 
tents, ^276.46; bookbinding, ^271.31; boots 
and shoes, ;^286.6o; candy, ^213.59; car- 
pets, $298.53; cigar boxes, $267.36; cigar 
factory, $294.66; cigarette factory, $266.12; 
cloak factory, $291.76; clothing factory, 
$248.36; cotton-mills, $228.32; dressmaking, 
$278.37; dry-goods stores, $368.84; jewelry 
factory, $285.20; laundry, $314.75; mattress 
factory, $263.80; men's furnishing-goods fac- 
tory, $232.24; millinery, $345-95; paper-box 
factory, $240.47; plug-tobacco factory, $235.67; 
printing-office, $300; skirt factory, $265.40; 
smoking-tobacco factory, $238.70. 

These, so far as they have been collected 
and tabulated by the various labor bureaus, are 
the returns for the United States as a whole. 
The reports for the following years of 1891 and 
1892 were expected to be far more general, but 
this has not proved to be the case. 



Present Wage-Rates. 



141 



AVERAGE WAGE PER STATE. 



Maine . . . 
Massachusetts 
Connecticut . 
Rhode Island 
New York . 
New Jersey . 
California 
Colorado . . 
Kansas . . 
Wisconsin 
Minnesota 
All cities . . 



$5-50 
6.68 
6.50 
5.87 
S.85 
5.00 
6.00 
6.00 
5.17 
517 
6.00 
5.24 



142 Women Wage-Earners. 



VII. 

GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR ENGLISH WORKERS. 

SO far as opportunity is concerned, it is the 
United States only that offers a practically 
unlimited field to women workers, to whom 
some four hundred trades and occupations are 
now open. Comparison with other countries 
is, however, essential, if we would judge fairly 
of conditions as a whole; and thus we turn first 
to that other English-speaking race, and the 
English worker at home. At once we are 
faced with the impossibility of gathering much 
more than surface indications, since in no other 
country is there any counterpart to our admir- 
able system of investigation and tabulation, each 
year more and more systematic and thorough. 
In spite of the fact that factory laws had their 
birth in England, and that the whole system of 
child labor — the early horrors of which find 
record in thousands of pages of special reports 
from inspectors appointed by government — 



Conditions for English Workers. 143 

has been through their means modified and 
improved, there are, even now, no sources of 
information as to numbers at work or the char- 
acteristics of special industries. The census 
must be the chief dependence ; and here we 
find the enormous proportions to which the 
employment of women has attained. 

In 1 86 1 these returns gave for England and 
Wales 1,024,277 women at work. Twenty years 
later the number had doubled, half a million 
being found in London alone. This does not 
include all, since, as Mr. Charles Booth notes 
in his recent '' Labor and Life of the People," 
many employed women do not return their 
employments. 

Mr. Booth's work is a purely private enter- 
prise, assisted by devoted co-workers, and by 
trained experts employed at his own expense. 
For the final estimate must be added general 
census returns, and the recent reports on the 
sweating-system in London and other English 
cities. 

Beginning with factory operatives and their 
interests, nothing is easier than to follow the 
course of legislation on their behalf. The 
'* Life of Lord Shaftesbury'' is, in itself, the 



144 Women Wage- Earners. 

history of the movement for the protection of 
women and children, — a movement begun early 
in the present century, and made imperative by 
the hideous disclosures of oppression and out- 
rage, not only among factory operatives, but 
the women and children in mining and other 
industries. Active as were his efforts and those 
of his colleagues, it is only within a generation 
that the fruit of their labor is plainly seen. As 
late as 1844, at the time Engel's notable book 
on '* The Condition of the Working-Class in 
England" appeared, the labor of children of 
four and five years was still permitted ; and 
women and children alike worked in mines, in 
brickyards, and other exposed and dangerous 
employments for the merest pittance. The 
pages of Engel's book swarm with incidents 
of individual and class misery; and while he 
admits fully, in the appendix prepared in 1886, 
that many of the evils enumerated have dis- 
appeared, he adds that for the mass of workers 
*^ the state of misery and insecurity in which 
they live now is as low as ever, perhaps lower." 
Year by year, in spite of constant agitation 
and the unceasing effort of Lord Shaftesbury to 
alter the worst abuses, these evils remained, and 



Conditions fo7^ English Workers, 145 

faced the examiner into social problems, slight 
ameliorations here and there serving chiefly to 
throw into darker relief the misery of the situa- 
tion. Not only the philanthropist but officials 
joined hands ; and in the proceedings of the 
British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, each year added to the number and 
importance of the protests against an iniqui- 
tous system. 

Chief among these protests ranked that 
against the overwork of pregnant mothers, 
through which, as one of the most able oppo- 
nents of existing evils, W. Stanley Jevons, wrote, 
'^ infinite, irreparable wrong is done to helpless 
children,'' adding that the appalling infant mor- 
tality of the manufacturing districts attracted 
far less attention and interest in the public 
mind than the death of a single murderer. 
At nearly the same time Mr. F. W. Lowndes 
gave the fruit of long research in a paper read 
before the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, entitled ^* The Destruction of 
Infancy;" ^ and this was supplemented by testi- 

1 *' The Destruction of Infants," by Mr. F. W. Lowndes, 
M. R. C. S., British Association for the Advancement of 
Science, Report for 1870, p. 586. 



1 46 Women Wage-Earners. 

mony from experts, the Statistical Society add- 
ing weighty testimony to the same effect.^ 

From these and other official testimony it was 
found that in nineteen manufacturing towns,^ 
out of 1,023,896 children [Forty-first Report of 
the Registrar-General, p. 36] born, 82,259 died 
in infancy. The rate of mortality varied from 
59.4 in Portsmouth through an ascending scale, 
being in London 78.6, and in Liverpool the 
almost incredible proportion of 103.6 per thou- 
sand. In a rural country infant mortality does 
not exceed from thirty-five to forty per thousand. 
The Report of the Select Committee on the 
Protection of Infant Life was filled with details 
so horrible that only the sworn testimony of 
experts made them credited at all.^ 

Dr. Hunter's report on rural mortality shows 
that when mothers are employed in what are 
known as " field gangs '' for out-of-door work, 
leaving their children in the charge of old 

1 Journal of the Statistical Society, Sept., 1870, vol. xxxiii. 

PP- 323-326. 

2 Parliamentary Paper, No. 372, July 20, 187 1 : Collected 

Series, vol. vii. p. 606. 

3 Sixth Report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council. 
1863, pp. 454-462. Parliamentary Paper, 1864, No. 3,416, 
vol. xxviii. 



Conditions for English Workers, 147 

women too weak for such labor as their own, 
that infants died Hke sheep. Godfrey's Cordial 
was the chief engine of destruction ; the corps 
of inspectors who reported to the Government 
finding infants in all stages of prostration, from 
the overdoses of the popular specific warranted 
to render any attention from nurse or mother 
quite unnecessary. 

As to the direct effects of factory or out-door 
labor on pregnant mothers, out of 10,000 births 
among factory mothers, there died from 1863-75 
of children under one year of age, in Ports- 
mouth 1,459, Liverpool 2,189, London 1,591, 
and other towns with textile industries 1,940. 
Statistics taken in Germany and at other points 
all went to show that in the matter of out-door 
labor at the harvest season, when all women- 
workers are in the fields, the deaths of nursing 
infants were three times as great as in the 
other nine months. 

For details and deduction from these facts 
the reader is referred to the reports themselves. 
'^ I go so far,'' wrote Mr. Jevons, '* as to advocate 
the ultimate complete exclusion of mothers of 
children under the age of three years from 
factories and workshops ; " and his conviction 



148 Women Wage- Earners. 

voiced that of every examiner into the situation 
as it stood at that time. 

The Factory and Workshop Act came as par- 
tial solution to the many problems ; and though 
regarded by the working-class as a mass of arbi- 
trary restrictions whose usefulness they denied 
and in whose benefits they had no faith, it has 
actually proved the Great Charter of the work- 
ing-classes. There are points still to be altered, — 
modifications made necessary by the constant 
change in methods of production, as well as in 
the enlarging sense of the ethical principles 
involved. But our own legislation is still far 
behind it at many points, and its work is done 
efficiently and thoroughly. Laws had been 
made, one by one, fifteen standing on the 
Statute Books in 1878, when all were abrogated, 
their essential features being codified in the 
Act as it stands to-day, — a genuine industrial 
code in one hundred and seven sections. 

Up to this date violation of its provisions 
had been incessant; but determined enforcement 
brought about a uniform working day, protec- 
tion of dangerous machinery, proper ventilation, 
improved sanitary conditions, an interdict oa 
Sunday labor, and many other reforms in ad- 



Conditions for English Workers, 149 

ministration. Fourteen years have seen next 
to no change in the Act, and the condition of 
women and child workers in factories and 
workshops has come to be regarded as the best 
that modern systems of production admit. 
These workers, whose numbers now mount to 
hundreds of thousands, are a class apart, and 
for them legislation has accomplished all that 
legislation seems able to do in alleviating social 
miseries. Content with the results achieved, 
need of further effort in other directions failed 
of recognition, and apathy became the general 
condition. 

It was during this season of repose that 
the public mind received first one shock and 
then another. '' The Bitter Cry of Outcast 
London " appalled all who read ; and leaf by 
leaf the new book of revelations disclosed always 
deeper depths of misery and want among all 
workers with the needle, — from the days of 
the fig-leaf the symbol of grinding toil and 
often hopeless misery. 

Not alone from professional agitators, so 
called, but from philanthropists of every order, 
came the cry for help. The Factory and Work- 
shop Act had not touched home labor. The 



1 50 Women Wage-Earners. 

sweating-system, born of modern conditions, 
had risen unsuspected, and ran riot, not only 
in East London, but even in back alleys of the 
sacred west, and in the swarming southwest 
region beyond London Bridge. The London 
*' Lancet," the most authoritative medical journal 
of the world, conservative as it has always been, 
has at last found that it must join hands with 
socialist and anarchist, '* scientific " or otherwise, 
with philanthropists of every order, against 
the new evil and its horrors. Rich and poor 
alike were involved. The virus of the deadly 
conditions under which the garments took shape 
was implanted in every stitch that held them 
together, and transferred itself to the wearer. 
Not only from London, but from every city of 
England, came the same cry; and the public 
faced suddenly an abyss of misery whose ex- 
istence had been unknown and unsuspected, and 
the causes of which seemed inexplicable. 

For many months of the year just ended 
(1892) parliamentary investigation has gone on. 
Report after report has been made to its com- 
mittees ; and as testimony from accredited 
sources poured in, incidentally a flood of light 
has been let in upon many forms of work out- 



Conditions for English Workers, 151 

side the clothing-manufacturer. To-day, in 
four huge volumes of some thousand pages each, 
one may read the testimony, heart-sickening in 
every detail, — a noted French political econo- 
mist, the Comte d'Haussonville, describing it, in 
a recent article in " La Revue des deux Mondes " 
as ** The Martyrology of English Industries." 

In such conditions inspection is inoperative. 
An army of inspectors would not suffice where 
every house represents from one to a dozen 
workshops under its roof, in each of which sani- 
tary conditions are defied, and the working day 
made more often fourteen and sixteen hours 
than twelve. Even for this day a starvation 
wage is the rule ; the sewing-machine operative, 
for example, while earning a wage of fifteen or 
eighteen pence, furnishing her own thread and 
being forced to pay rental on the machine. 

A portion of a wage table is given here as 
illustrative of rates, and used as a reference table 
before the preparation of Mr. Booth's book, 
which gives much the same figures : — 

Making paper bags, d^\d, to ^\d. per thousand; 
possible earnings, 5^-. to 6^". per week. 

Button-holes, 3^. a dozen; possible earnings, Zs. 
a week. 



152 Women Wage- Earners. 

Shirts, 2d, each, worker finding her own cotton; 
can get six done between 8 a. m. and 11 p. m. 

Sack sewing, 6^. for twenty-five ; Zd, to i^. 6^. per 
hundred. Possible earnings, %s. per week. 

Pill-box making, ^s, for thirty-six gross; possible 
earnings, 8^. per week. 

Shirt button-hole making, i^. a dozen; can do 
three or four dozen a day. 

Whip-making, i^. a dozen; can do a dozen a day. 

Trousers finishing, 3^, to 5^. each, finding one's 
own cotton ; can do four a day. 

Shirt-finishing, 3^. to 4^. a dozen ; possible earnings, 
6s, a week. 

Outside of the cities, where the needle is 
almost the sole refuge of the unskilled worker, 
every industry is invaded. A recent report as 
to English nail and chain workers shows hours 
and general conditions to be almost intolerable, 
while the wage averages eightpence a day. In 
the mines, despite steady action concerning 
them, women are working by hundreds for the 
same rate. In short, from every quarter comes 
in repeated testimony that the majority of work- 
ing Englishwomen are struggling for a liveli- 
hood ; that a pound a week is a fortune, and 
that the majority live on a wage below subsist- 
ence point. 



Conditions for English Workers. 153 

The enormous influx of foreign population 
IS partly responsible for these conditions, but 
far less than is popularly supposed ; since the 
Jews, most often accused, are in many cases 
juster employers than the Christians, and suffer 
from the same causes. For all alike, legislation 
is powerless to reach certain ingrained evils, 
and the recent sweating-commission ended its 
report with the words: — 

" We express the firm hope that the faithful exposure 
of the evils that we have been called upon to unveil, 
will have the effect of leading capitalists to lend greater 
attention to the conditions under which work is done, 
which furnishes the merchandise they demand. When 
legislation has attained the limit beyond which it can 
no longer be useful, the amelioration of the condition 
of workers can result only from the increasing moral 
sense of those who employ them." 

This conclusion, it may be added, is in full 
accord with that given in the Encyclical of Pope 
Leo XIII., as well as with that of our most 
serious workers at home ; our own government 
examination into the sweating-system, now em- 
bodied in a Congressional Report accessible 
to all, being simply confirmation of every point 
made in that for England. As a summary of 



154 Women Wage- Earners. 

many working conditions in London, I add part 
of a report made by an indefatigable student of 
social conditions, Margaret Harkness, associated 
now with Mr. Charles Booth, and as able an ob- 
server as her cousin and co-worker. Miss Beatrice 
Potter, whose report on the sweating-system 
makes part of Mr. Booth's first volume:^ — 

'' I have, for the last six months, been attempting 
to find out something about the hours and wages of 
girls who work at various trades in the city. Had I 
known how difficult the task would be, I should 
probably never have attempted it. Last time I heard 
of Mr. Besant he was sitting in his office, overwhelmed 
with figures and facts. He said then that he did not 
expect to publish anything about the work of girls and 
women in the United Kingdom under a year or eigh- 
teen months. I do not wonder at it. Apart from 
the method of his inquiry, I know how exceedingly 
difficult it is to arrive at the truth; the tact and 
patience it needs to make such investigations. 
Employees and employers take very different views of 
the same circumstances ; one must listen to both, and 
then split the difference. 

'' There are at the present time absolutely no figures 
to go upon if one wishes to learn something about the 
hours and wages of girls who follow certain occupations 

^ Labor and Life of the People, vol. i. : East London. Edited 
by Charles Booth, p. 564. 



Conditions for English Workers, 1 5 5 

in the city. The factory inspectors (admirable men, 
but very much overworked) come, with the most 
naive delight, to visit any person who has information 
to give about the people over whose interests they are 
supposed to watch with fatherly interest. Clergymen 
shake their heads, or refer one to homes and charities. 
One has to find out the truth for one's self. Both 
employers and employees must be visited. Even 
then one must wait days and weeks to inspire them 
with confidence, for thus alone can one obtain a 
thorough knowledge of things as they really are, and 
arrive at facts unbiassed by prejudice. 

" So far I have found that there are, at least, two 
hundred trades at which girls work in the city. Some 
employ hundreds of hands, and some only fifty or sixty. 
Printers give the greatest amount of work, perhaps ; 
but there are at least two hundred other occupations 
in which girls earn a living; namely, brush-makers, 
button-makers, cigarette-makers, electric-light fitters, 
fur-workers, India-rubber-stamp machinist, magic- 
lantern-slide makers, perfumers, portmanteau- makers, 
spectacle-makers, surgical -instrument makers, tie- 
makers, etc. These girls can be roughly divided 
into two classes, — those who earn from 8j-. to 145-., 
and those who earn from \s, to Si", per week. Taking 
slack time into consideration, it is, I think, safe to say 
that loj. is the average weekly wage of the first class, 
and 4^. dd, that of the second class. Their weekly 
wage often falls below this, and sometimes rises above 



156 Women Wage- Earners. 

it. The hours are almost invariably from 8 a. m. to 7 
P.M., with one hour for dinner and a half- holiday on 
Saturday. I know few cases in which such girls work 
less ; a good many in which over-time reaches to ten 
or eleven at night; a few in which over- time means 
all night. There is little to choose between the two 
classes. The second are allowed by their employers 
to wear old clothes and boots ; the first must make ^ a 
genteel appearance.' 

'' I often hear rich women say, ^ Oh, working-girls 
cannot be very poor ; they wear such smart feathers.' 
If these women knew how the girls have to stint in 
underclothing and food in order to make what their 
employers call ' a genteel appearance,' I think they 
would pass quite another verdict. I will give two 
typical cases : A girl living just over Blackfriars Bridge, 
in one small room, for which she pays 5^"., earns \os. 
a week in a printer's business. She works from 8 a. m. 
to 6 p. M., then returns home to do all the washing, 
cleaning, cooking, etc., that is necessary in a one-room 
establishment. She has an invalid mother dependent 
on her efforts, and is out-patient herself at one of the 
London hospitals. She was sixteen last Christmas, 
Another girl, who lives in two cellars near Lisson 
Grove, with father, mother, and six brothers and 
sisters, earns 35-. 6^. a week in a well-known factory. 
She is seventeen years old, but does not look more 
than ten or eleven. Every morning she walks a mile 
to her work, arriving at eight o'clock ; every evening 



Conditions for English Workers. 1 5 7 

she walks a mile back, reaching home about seven 
o'clock. If she arrives at the factory five minutes 
late, she is fined 7^. If she stays away a whole day, 
she is ^ drilled,' — that is, kept without work a whole 
week. Her father has been out of employment for 
six months ; so her weekly 35*. dd. goes into the family 
purse. Her food consists of three slices of bread and 
butter, which she takes to the factory for dinner; 
one sHce of bread and butter and some weak tea for 
supper and breakfast. These cases are not picked. 
They are to be found scattered all over London. 
Many and many a family is at the present time being 
kept by the labor of one or two such girls, who can at 
the most earn a few shillings. When one thinks what 
the life of a young girl is in happy families, all the 
joyousness of which she is capable, until sorrow sets 
its seal on her, one's heart aches for the sad lives of 
these girls in the city. 

* And still her voice comes ringing 
Across the soft still air, 
And still I hear her singing, 
" Oh, life, thou art most fair ! " ' 

^'^A young girl is capable of feeling in one brief 
hour more intense delight than a boy of her age 
experiences in a fortnight. Yet all this joyousness is 
ruthlessly stamped upon by competition, and thou- 
sands of girls in London have no enjoyment except to 
gaze at monstrosities in penny gaffs, or to dance on dirty 



158 Women Wage- Earners. 

pavements ; and generally these poor things are too 
tired even to do that. It is strange that the public 
take so little interest in these girls, considering they 
must become mothers of future citizens. ^ The youth 
of a nation are the trustees of posterity.' What sort 
of daughters are these girls with their pinched faces 
and stunted bodies likely to give England? What 
will posterity say of the girl labor that now goes on 
in the city? I have seen strong men weeping because 
they have no bread to give their children ; I know 
at the London docks chains have been replaced by 
wooden barriers, because starving men behind pressed 
so hard on starving men in front, that the latter were 
nearly cut in two by the iron railings ; I have watched 
a contractor mauled when he had no work to give, 
and have myself been nearly killed by a brick-bat 
that was hurled at a contractor's head by a man whose 
family was starving : but I deliberately say of all the 
victims of our present competitive system I pity these 
girls the most. They are so fragile. Honest work is 
made for them almost impossible ; and if they slip, 
no one gives them a second chance, they are kicked 
and spat upon by the public, I know that the girl- 
labor question is but a portion of the larger labor 
question, that nothing can be done for them at 
present ; but I wish that they were not the victims of 
the laissez-faire policy in two ways instead of one ; 
I wish that their richer sisters were not so terribly 
apathetic about them." 



Conditions for English Workers. 159 

For Scotland, industries, wages, and general 
conditions are much the same as those of Eng- 
land. Factory life has been at many points 
improved, and the superior thrift and education 
of the working-class shows in the large amount 
of their savings. But Glasgow has faced con- 
ditions almost as terrible as those given in ** The 
Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with a result not 
yet attained by the latter city, having destroyed 
hundreds of foul tenements to make room for 
improved dwellings. 

For Ireland, though Irish linen, poplins, and 
woollens are the synonym of excellence, the pro- 
portion of women workers in these industries is 
comparatively small. In a few counties in the 
south Irish lace is made, but the women are 
chiefly agricultural laborers. Thanks to the 
efforts of Parnell, in 1885, there was formed '* The 
Association for the Promotion of Irish Indus- 
tries," then chiefly destroyed by the *'Act of 
Union '' which permitted England to levy protec- 
tive tariffs on all Irish manufactures. Statistics 
on these points are hidden in English Blue-books, 
and we have no very reliable data as to the num- 
ber of women and children employed. The 
efforts of the Countess of Aberdeen, during the 



1 60 Women Wuge-Earners. 

term of her husband as Viceroy of Ireland, and 
of the Countess of Dunraven on the Dunraven 
estates in the county of Limerick, have done 
much to re-estabhsh the lace industry, — with 
such success that the work compares favorably 
with that of some of the French convents. 

In Wales, as in the North of England, women 
and children are employed in the mines, and 
there is constant evasion of the laws regulating 
hours, with a wage as inadequate as the work is 
heavy. Heavy woollens and corduroy employ a 
small proportion in their manufacture, wage and 
hours being the same as those of England. 



Conditions for Continental Workers. i6i 



VIII. 

GENERAL CONDITIONS FOR CONTINENTAL 

WORKERS. 

FOR France the census of 1847 showed a 
list of 959 women workers in Paris earn- 
ing sixty centimes a day; 100,000 earning 
from sixty centimes to three francs, and 626 
earning over three francs. That for 1869 
showed 17,203, earning from fifty centimes to 
one franc twenty-five centimes daily; 11,000 
of these workers being furnished lodging, food, 
and washing. Of the entire number 88,340 
earned from one franc fifty centimes to four 
francs a day ; ^6^ earned from four francs fifty 
centimes to ten francs daily, most of the latter 
class being heads of work rooms or shops. 
The rise in wages affected the better orders 
of worker, but left the sewing-woman's wage 
nearly unchanged. Levasseur ^ tells us that 

1 Histoire des Classes Ouvriers en France depuis 1789 
jusqu'a nos Jours, par E. Levasseur. 



1 6 2 Women Wage- Earners. 

toward the end of the reign of Louis Philippe 
the wage of a woman varied ordinarily from 
twelve to twenty-five sous, exceptionally from 
twenty to forty; that of children being from six 
to fifteen sous ; of men from thirty sous for 
ordinary laborers, to forty or forty-five for 
skilled work. 

The census for 1851 gave for Paris 112,891 
workwomen, 60,000 of whom were sewers. 
Convent sewing, that of the prisons and reforma- 
tories, and the competition of women who had 
homes and worked simply for pin-money, kept 
the wage at a minimum ; and these conditions 
still operate toward that end, precisely as they 
do for all countries where the needle is a means 
of support, the evil being felt most severely in 
our cities. The facts in the life of a French 
seampstress are much the same as those of the 
Englishwoman. To earn two francs a day she 
must make eight chemises, working from four- 
teen to sixteen hours daily to accomplish this. 
The income of the average sewer does not 
exceed, at the best, five hundred francs, and 
most usually falls below. Rents are so high 
that a garret requires not less than one hundred 
francs a year. In his researches into conditions, 



Conditions for Continental Workers, 163 

Jules Simon ^ found that this sum compelled de- 
privations of every order. Expenses were as 
follows : Rent, 100 francs ; clothing, bedding, etc , 
115 francs; washing, 36 francs; heat and light, 
36 francs. These sums amounted to 286.50 
francs, the amount remaining for food being 
215.50, or a little less than twelve sous a day, — 
the amount expended by two of our own seam- 
stresses in New York in 1887, the items being 
given by the earner.^ 

Existence on French soil, whether in Paris, 
the manufacturing towns, or the provinces, has 
come to mean something very different from 
the facts of a generation ago. Then, with 
wages hardly above ** subsistence point," the 
thrifty Frenchwoman not only lived, but man- 
aged to put by a trifle each month. Wages 
have risen, but prices have at the same time 
advanced. Every article of daily need is at 
the highest point, — sugar, which the London 
workwoman buys at a penny a pound, being 
twelve cents a pound in Paris ; and flour, 
milk, eggs, equally high. Fuel is so dear 
that shivering is the law for all save the 

1 L'Ouvriere, par Jules Simon. 
'^ Prisoners of Poverty, p. ii8. 



1 64 Women Wage- Earners. 

wealthy ; and rents are no less dear, with no 
^* improved dwellings" system to give the most 
for the scant sum at disposal. Bread and coffee, 
chiefly chiccory, make one meal ; bread alone is 
the staple of the others, with a bit of meat for 
Sunday. Hours are frightfully long, the disabili- 
ties of the French needleworker being in many 
points the same as those of her English sister. 
In short, even skilled labor has many disabili- 
ties, the saving fact being that unskilled is in far 
less proportion than across the Channel, the 
present system of education including many 
forms of industrial training. 

Generations of freer life than that of England, 
and many traditions in her favor give certain 
advantages to the woman born on French soil. 
It is taken for granted that she will after mar- 
riage share her husband's work or continue her 
own, and her keen intelligence is relied upon to 
a degree unknown to other nations. Repeated 
wars, and the enrolment of all her men for 
fixed periods of service, have developed the 
capacity of women in business directions, and 
they fill every known occupation. The light- 
heartedness of her nation is in her favor, and 
she has learned thoroughly how to extract the 



Conditions for Continental Workers, 165 

most from every centime. There is none of 
the hopeless dowdiness and dejection that char- 
acterize the lower order of EngHshwoman. 
Trim, tidy, and thrifty, the Frenchwoman faces 
poverty with a smihng courage that is part of 
her strength, this look changing often for the 
older ones into a patience which still holds 
courage. 

Thus far there is no official report of the 
industries in which they are engaged, and 
figures must be drawn from unofficial sources. 
M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the noted political 
economist, in his history of '* The Labor of 
Women in the Nineteenth Century," computes 
the number of women at work in the manu- 
factories of textile fabrics, cotton, woollen, 
linen, and silk, as nearly one million; and 
outside of this is the enormous number of 
lace-makers and general workers in all occupa- 
tions. There are over a quarter of a million 
of these lace-workers, whose wages run from 
eighty and ninety centimes to two francs a 
day; and the rate of payment for Swiss lace- 
workers is the same. 

During the Congres Feministe held in the 
autumn of 1892, Madame Vincent, an ardent 



1 66 Women Wage- Earners. 

champion of women wage-earners, presented 
statistics, chiefly from private sources, showing 
that out of 19,352,000 artisans in France, there 
are 4,415,000 women who receive in wages of 
dividends nearly 1^500,000,000 a year. Their 
wage is much less in proportion to the work 
they do than that of men, yet they draw thirty- 
five per cent of the entire sum spent in wages. 
In Paris alone, over 8,000 women are doing 
business on an independent footing; and of 
3,858 suits judged in 1892 by the Working- 
man's Council, 1,674 concerned women. In 
spite of these numbers and the abuses known 
to exist, the Chamber of Deputies has refused 
practically to extend to women workers the 
law for the regulation of the conditions of 
work in workshops. The refusal is disguised 
under the form of adjournment of the matter, 
the reason assigned being that the grievances 
of women are by no means ripe enough for 
discussion. Women themselves are not at all 
of the same mind ; and the result has already 
been a move toward definite organization of 
trades, and united action for all women engaged 
in them, — a step hitherto regarded as impossible. 
The first effect of this has been a protest from 



Conditions for Continental Workers. 167 

Paris shopgirls against the action of the 
Chamber of Deputies, and the formation of 
committees whose business will be to enlist 
the interest and co-operation of women through- 
out the entire country, — a slow process, but one 
that will mean both education and final release 
from some at least of the worst disabilities now 
weighting all women workers. 

*' La femme devenue ouvriere, n'est plus une 
femme," wrote Jules Simon in a burst of despair 
at the conditions of the Paris workwoman ; and 
he repeated the word as his investigations ex- 
tended to manufacturing France, and he found 
everywhere the home in many cases abolished, 
the crhhe taking its place till the child, vitally 
dependent upon a care that included love, gave 
up the struggle for existence, rendering its tiny 
quota to the long list of infant mortality. 
M. Leroy-Beaulieu had described years before 
the practical extinction of the family and the 
government interference^ brought about by 
the discoveries made by the government in- 
specting committee, upon whom consternation 
seized as they found decadence of morals, 

^ Le Travail des Femmes au XIX. Siecle, par Paul Leroy- 
Beaulieu. 



1 68 Women Wage-Earners, 

enfeebled physique, and that the ordinary girl- 
worker at sixteen or seventeen could not sew 
a seam, or make a broth, or care for a child's 
needs or the simplest demands of a home. 
Appalled at these conditions, France set about 
the organization of industrial schools, and these 
have altered the whole face of affairs. 

Generations of abuses had made, up to the 
time of the investigation, the history of the 
working-class in France. One of their best- 
known scientific observers, the statistician 
Villerme, examined in person, and as one of 
the government inspecting committee reported 
on the condition of dwellings in Lille, Amiens, 
and other manufacturing towns of France. 
The weavers and spinners of Lille lived in 
caves, of which thirty-six hundred were found 
occupied by families, — father, mother, and 
children as soon as old enough, employed in the 
mills, and returning at night to these dens, where 
filth and darkness periodically did their work 
of decimation, and where infant mortality had 
reached the maximum. Horrified at the dis- 
coveries made, three thousand of these dwellings 
were at once destroyed. But for unknown and 
quite inscrutable reasons six hundred were 



Conditions for Continental Workers. 169 

allowed to remain and receive double the 
original number of tenants.^ Years passed 
before the last cave was filled up, the children 
born in them providing an enormous percentage 
for prison and galleys. At Douai, Rouen, 
Roubaix, and many other points, such hideous 
filth marked the homes of the working-class 
that Villerme reported : '* The walls are covered 
with a thousand layers of ordure/' The women, 
exhausted and depleted by a day's labor of 
from twelve to fourteen hours, had no time to 
think of cleanliness. In fact, its meaning had 
never been taught ; and though industrial schools 
increase, hours are now shortened, and inspec- 
tion is active, it remains true that almost the 
same conditions perpetuate themselves at many 
points, — the descriptions given by the great 
realist, Zola, of women and children in the mines, 
and the hideousness of their home life, being 
very literal and unexaggerated fact. 

As to conditions of the work itself, many 
trades and occupations require for their proper 
carrying on methods and surroundings abso- 
lutely destructive to health. In all preparation 
of hemp and oakum dust is excessive; far 
^ L'Ouvriere, p. 158. 



1 70 Women Wage-Earners. 

beyond that of the cotton-mill, which itself 
breeds consumption. In the spinning of flax 
great heat and water are both necessities. 
** Nothing is more wretched," writes Jules 
Simon, **than a linen-spinner's surroundings. 
Water covers the brick floor. The odor of the 
linen and a temperature often exceeding twenty- 
five Reaumur fill the workroom with an intoler- 
able stench. The majority of the workwomen, 
obliged to put off most of their garments, are 
huddled together in this pestilential atmosphere, 
imprisoned in the machines, pressed one against 
the other, their bodies streaming with sweat, 
their feet bare to the ankle ; and when a day, 
nominally of twelve hours but really of thirteen 
and a half, is over, they quit the workroom for 
home, the rags they wear barely protecting 
them from cold and damp." 

Details of the same order abound in the work 
of the political economist M. Leroy-Beaulieu,^ 
who seeks at all points to give the most favor- 
able impression possible. In each and every 
case the great authorities appear to be of one 
mind as to the disastrous effects upon the 
children born to these mothers. That the 
^ Lc Travail clcs Fcnimcs aux XIX. Sieclc. 



Conditions for Continental Workers. 171 

crkhe is now practically a part of every factory 
makes little or no difference. 

** The creche'' writes Jules Simon, ** abolishes 
maternity in all save its pains. The working 
mother is defrauded of her own means of growth, 
bound up in the training of the child ; and the 
child loses its right to be loved and guarded 
by love." In short, for all continental countries, 
as well as for England and our women, the 
question of child labor and the destiny of 
the child are inextricably bound up in that of the 
working mother, and are vital factors in working 
out the problem of woman as a wage-earner. 
What proportion of wage-earning women recruit 
the ranks of prostitution, is a question often 
asked. In Paris, which is in one sense the focus 
of French labor, its many opportunities drawing 
to it a large contingent from the provinces, it is 
popularly supposed that the ranks of the sewing- 
women give large proportion to houses of 
prostitution. This opinion is the prevailing 
one for all large cities, whether in Europe or 
America, yet is disproved on all sides. For 
Paris Parent-Duchalet states that in the statistics 
given by the prefecture of police, in a table 
including forty-one categories, women with no 



172 Women Wage-Earners. 

occupation had first rank as prostitutes, do- 
mestic service giving the second, and sewing- 
women the smallest proportion. This is the 
more surprising when one considers that their 
wage is often below the point of subsistence, 
and that temptation of every order waits upon 
them. At the best the wage falls far below that of 
men, even when both engage in the same work. 
The present movement toward organization is 
the first step toward a general bettering of all 
trades and their wage ; and for fullest details of 
this, and work in connection with the admirable 
Bourse du Travail, one of its most important 
features of working life to-day in Paris, the reader 
must turn to the reports themselves, beginning 
with the first one, issued in 1887-88.^ The 
same facts may be said to form the story of 
labor in Belgium, in Switzerland, in Italy, and 
at all points where women or children are at 
work, whether in factory or mine or workshop. 
For Belgium the situation is summed up in a 
very important and minute report of the govern- 
ment inquiry commission into the labor of 
women and children, — the first made in 1867 and 

1 Annuaire de la Bourse du Travail. Volumes from 1887 to 
1892 inclusive. 



Conditions for Co7itinental Workers. 173 

followed by one in 1874, the latest having been 
made in 1891/ 

A comprehensive law, promulgated Nov. 2, 
1892, and regulating the labor of women and 
children in factories and mines, was amended 
in May, 1893, by the addition of very specific 
regulations as to all employments affecting 
health and morals. The Presidential decree 
consists of two parts, — the first dealing with 
the employment of women and children in con- 
nection with machinery when in motion, or in 
which the dangerous parts are not fully pro- 
tected, in glass-blowing and in carrying weights. 
The second part of the decree consists of three 
tables, of which A enumerates certain indus- 
tries, chiefly the manufacture of acids, dyes, 
chemicals, etc., also manures and glass, crystal, 
and metal polishing, in which female and child 
labor are prohibited ; B those in which children 
under eighteen must not work, chiefly the manu- 

1 Rapport sur TEnquete faite au nom de TAcademie Royale 
de Medecine de Belgique, par la commission chargee d'etudier 
la question de Temploi des femmes dans les travaux souter- 
rain des mines, Bruxelles, 1868. 

Documents nouveaux relatifs au travail des femmes et des 
enfants, dans les manufactures, les mines, etc, etc. Bruxelles, 

1874. 



1 74 Women Wage-Earners. 

facture of explosives ; and C, a large variety 
of other industries in which female and child 
labor is only allowed conditionally. The great 
majority of these are industries involving special 
risk through the disengagement of dust-particles 
or vapors ; while a few are ranked as dangerous, 
owing to risk of fire and the contraction of 
special diseases, etc. 

Belgium, French in feeling and in methods, 
has known some of the worst abuses discoverable 
on continental soil, thousands of women and 
children in her mines having toiled from twelve 
to sixteen hours a day, with often no Sunday 
rest, for a wage at bare subsistence point. In 
** Germinal,*' Zola, who spent months observing 
every phase of their life, has given a picture, 
unsurpassed in any literature, of the misery 
and degradation of the worker. An investiga- 
tion in 1874, and indignation at some of the 
conditions then discovered, brought about 
modifications of the law. That of the general 
congress of 1891 accomplished much more ; but 
work must still be done before any very marked 
advance becomes discernible. 

Passing to Germany, a good two-thirds of 
the women are at work in field or shop or 



Conditions for Continental Workers, 175 

home, the proportion of women in agriculture 
being larger than in any other country of 
Europe. Her schools furnish better training 
than those of any other nation. In all these 
points Prussia leads, though till recently legis- 
lation has been in behalf of child-workers, and 
women have been practically ignored. But 
factory regulations are minute and extended ; 
and the questions involved in the labor of 
women, and its bearing on health, longevity, 
etc., are now coming under consideration. In 
Silesia, as early as 1868, women were excluded 
from the salt-mines ; and the Labor Congress of 
1889 brought about many changes of the laws 
on this point for Belgium and Germany. In 
Italy, in which country industrial education is 
now receiving much attention, the labor of wo- 
men, continuous, severe, and underpaid, as it is 
known to be, finds small mention, save among 
special students of social questions. Russia 
has practically no data from which judgment 
can be formed. In short, it is only in English- 
speaking countries that really efficient action 
as to the labor of women has taken place; 
while even for them the work has but begun, 
and new and more radical forms will be neces- 



176 Women Wage-Earners, 

sary for any real progress toward final better- 
ment. Toward such end the labor bureaus of 
our own country are working diligently; and 
it is with them that we have next to do, the 
investigations already made and incorporated 
in their reports being full of suggestion for 
future workers. 

The census of 1882 gave for Germany, in a 
population of 45,222,113 persons, 23,071,364 
women, of whom 1,109,530 were widows, and 
5,467,730 unmarried, a large proportion of both 
these classes being self-supporting. An im- 
mense number of these were agricultural labor- 
ers. In Prussia in 1867 the census gave the 
number of women agricultural laborers as 
1,054,213. Woman's wage for a day's labor, 
always twelve and often fourteen hours, is from 
twenty to twenty-five cents, about a third of that 
received by men doing the same work. Brassey, 
the great railroad contractor, found throughout 
Germany that her wage was always a third and 
often a quarter less than that of men. 

For united Germany the description given by 
Villerme in 1836 is still true for many points. 
** The misery in which the cotton spinners and 
weavers of the upper Rhine live," he writes, 



Conditions for Continental Workers. 177 

'' is so profound that it produces the saddest 
results. In the famihes of manufacturers, 
drapers, merchants, etc., half the children born 
attain their nineteenth year, this same half 
ceasing to exist before the age of two years in 
the families of weavers and workers at cotton- 
spinning/* 

As to numbers employed in trades and indus- 
tries, it is difficult to secure them with exact- 
ness. The census of 1871 reported three tenths 
of the population as agricultural, the males 
employed in agriculture being 2,338,174, and 
the females 4,426,573. Household service had 
840,000 women on its rolls. In 1875 the 
cotton-mills employed in weaving and spinning 
95,934 women; the woollen manufacture, nearly 
193,000; linen, hemp, and jute, 190,000. The 
labor of women and children was hardly recog- 
nized, and statistics had to be disentangled as 
best they might be from general tables of occu- 
pations. Through the persistent efforts of the 
Centre in the German Reichstag, a gradual 
betterment of the working-classes has been 
brought about, and thus indirectly that of 
women and children, — the first combined and 
determined effort being made in 1889, when 



1 78 Women Wage-Earners. 

three bills were brought up for discussion. 
The first made the working-day not to exceed 
eleven hours; the second demanded the sus- 
pension of industrial labor on Sunday, save in 
exceptional cases, when five hours' labor was to 
be allowed; the third concerned the labor of 
women and children, and with some modifica- 
tions is practically the law to-day. Night and 
Sunday labor in mines, smelting-works, rolling- 
mills, and dockyards is entirely forbidden, nor 
can married women work more than ten hours 
a day. The Federal Council has the right also 
to forbid the employment of women and chil- 
dren in all factories and establishments where 
health and morals are exposed to exceptional 
dangers. 

At the period at which the investigations 
which brought about the agitation of the ques- 
tion were made, the number of child laborers 
had increased in two years from 155,000 to 
192,000, children hardly more than babies 
being in the factories. At present the law for- 
bids the employment of any child under twelve, 
and not less than three hours' schooling daily 
is compulsory. Abuses exist at all points, 
women workers in mines faring, even with short- 



Conditions for Continental Workers, 179 

ened day, in very evil case, — the wage at or 
below subsistence point and the general con- 
ditions of the most hopeless order. Constant 
agitation goes on in the Reichstag, and organi- 
zation among the women themselves will in time 
bring about needed reforms; but as a whole 
the German woman is in many points less con- 
sidered than the women of any other civilized 
nation. 

Though Italy is pre-eminently an agricul- 
tural country, and men, women, and children are 
alike employed in agricultural pursuits, there 
has been no trustworthy record of numbers 
engaged. In manufacturing there are more 
statistics, but interest in the woman's share in 
labor is of recent date. In the silk manu- 
facture, in which Italy ranks second only to 
China, and far beyond all other competitors, 
81,165 women and 25,373 children were em- 
ployed in 1877, chiefly in unwinding cocoons, 
the number at present having increased nearly 
ten per cent. In the cotton industry there 
were employed, at the time of the same census, 
2,696 women and 2,520 children; and a pro- 
portionate increase in numbers has taken place. 
In the flax and hemp industries nearly seventy 



1 80 Women Wage-Earners. 

thousand workers used hand-looms at home, 
the larger proportion of these being women. 
In the factories it was found that 2,565 women 
and 1,227 children were at work as spinners, 
and 3,394 women and 1,020 children as weavers. 
Women are steadily employed in the manu- 
facture of straw hats and bonnets, in jute in 
many forms, in cigar and cigarette making, and 
in many other industries, cheap clothing lead- 
ing. Of the thirty millions and more of popu- 
lation, not quite half are women ; and of these 
nearly half are wage-earners, the majority in 
unrecorded forms of labor, — chiefly household 
service or the care of their own homes, with 
some petty industry adding its mite to the 
yearly income. But industrial training has but 
begun for Italy. The wage is pitiably low, the 
conditions of living hard and full of privation ; 
nor can these facts alter till better education 
and organization have been brought about. 
The latest Italian census is not yet published ; 
but proofs of tables of the comparative wage 
for twenty years in some of the principal indus- 
tries have been sent me through the courtesy 
of Signor Luigi Bodio, the minister of agricul- 
ture, commerce, and general statistics. From 



Conditions for Continental Workers. i8i 

these tables it is found that the daily wage of 
women cotton-spinners has risen from sixty 
centimes, in 1 871, to one franc twenty-six cen- 
times in 1 89 1, this being the equivalent of one 
lire twenty-six centissimi. The wage for weav- 
ing has risen from eighty centimes, in 1871, 
to one franc twenty-six centimes in 1891. 
Spoolers in 1871 received eighty-eight centimes 
as against one franc thirty centimes in 1891. 
In hemp-spinning the wage has fallen from 
ninety to eighty centimes, but has risen from 
ninety-eight centimes to one franc thirty cen- 
times for twisting ; the wage in the cases cited 
being a little more than a third that of men. 
In paper-making experienced workers now 
receive one franc fifty-two centimes as against 
sixty-six centimes in 1871 ; and in making of 
stearine candles one franc as against seventy- 
eight centimes in 1871. Running through the 
tables of every industry, the average is about 
the same, — the wage for women, even when 
doing the same work, hardly more than a third 
that for men, and the amount for either at bare 
subsistence point. 

In Russia the woman's wage is but a fifth that 
of men, with working conditions, save at a few 



1 82 Women Wage-Earnej's, 

points where the work of Professor Janzhul and 
his confreres has told, at the very worst, — the 
day being from twelve to sixteen hours long 
even in the best-managed factories, while in the 
village industries, which, owing to the peculiar 
conditions of Russian life, make up the larger 
proportion of her industries, it is for many 
workers almost unending, the merest respite 
being given for sleep. As yet but few authentic 
figures as to the numbers employed are given, 
though on the first investigation into domestic 
industries made a few years since it was found 
that over 890,000 were engaged in them, and 
also at the same time in agriculture. Manu- 
facturing in Russia concentrates about Moscow 
and St. Petersburg, which represent more than 
two fifths of the whole production of the empire. 
The requirements of nine tenths of the Russian 
people are met by domestic manufacture in the 
villages, and home-weaving for the market 
employs over two hundred thousand workers, 
other textiles, leather, etc., being dealt with in 
the same way. 

In the other northern countries of Europe, — 
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, — manufactures 
are at a minimum, fisheries and agriculture being 



Conditions for Continental Workers. 183 

the chief industries. Women are employed in 
both ; and in the few factories there is a small 
proportion of women and children, working at 
a wage much less than that given to men. 
Sweden has a most admirable system of indus- 
trial education ; and Norway and Denmark, 
though far less in population, have adopted 
the same methods. But the limitations of all 
wage-earning women are felt here in the same 
manner as elsewhere, the summary for all coun- 
tries being much the same. The Northern 
workwoman has the advantage of training and 
of as keen a sense of economy as the French- 
woman ; but her wage is most usually at or 
below subsistence point, and her difficulties are 
those of the worker in general, — long hours, 
insufficient pay, and fierce competition. 

As to the present laws concerning the length 
of the working-day, a general abstract is found 
in a return issued in reply to an address from 
the House of Commons, an abstract of which 
was given in ** St. James' Gazette" : — 

^' In France the hours of adult labor are regulated 
by a series of decrees, of which the earliest, promul- 
gated September, 1848, enacts that the workingman's 
day in manufactories and mills shall not exceed twelve 



184 Women Wage-Earners. 

hours of ^ effective * or actual labor. A decree issued 
in May, 1851, made exceptions, so that more hours 
might be worked in certain trades. In 1885 ^ ^^^' 
cular was issued stating that the limit of twelve hours 
per diem was not to be imposed where hand -power 
was employed, but was to be confined to manu- 
factories and mills in which the motive power was 
machinery. No workshops were to come under the 
clauses of the act that did not employ more than 
twenty hands in any one shed. The report says : *It 
is likewise to be borne in mind that there is in France 
no compulsory observance of Sunday, and no day of 
habitual rest.' 

" The reports of the French inspectors of labor 
appear to show that the Act of 1848 is very loosely 
interpreted. It is even doubtful whether the section 
limiting the actual working- day to twelve hours was 
intended to include or exclude hours of rest. Prac- 
tically the legal time is made to exclude rest. This 
makes the working-day so much the longer. Thus 
one of the French inspectors states that the hours of 
attendance in factories under the Act of 1848 are 
from five in the morning until seven in the evening, 
or a total of fourteen hours, out of which there are 
twelve hours of ' effective labor.' But the same 
authority also states that * effective ' time often 
extends to thirteen and fourteen hours in many 
weaving-establishments. Finally, we are told that, 
' as a rule,' it may be taken that Frenchmen 



Conditions for Continental Workers. 185 

employed in factories are present in the shops at 
least fourteen hours out of every twenty four. 

" Among the countries having no laws affecting the ' 
hours of adult labor, Germany is conspicuous. Em- 
ployers, however, cannot force their servants to work 
on Sundays and feast-days. Employment of youthful 
or female labor in certain kinds of factories, which is 
attended with special danger to health or morals, is 
forbidden, or made conditional on certain regulations, 
by which night labor for female work-people is espe- 
cially forbidden. In Germany, as in other countries 
also, women may not be employed in factories for a 
certain time after childbirth. In Hesse-Darmstadt 
the medium duration of labor is from ten to twelve 
hours, — the cases in which the latter time is 
exceeded being, however, more frequent than those 
in which the former is not exceeded. The normal 
work- day throughout Saxony in all the principal 
branches of industry is from 6 a. m. to 7 p. m., with 
half an hour for breakfast, an hour for dinner, and 
half an hour for supper. In the manufacturing 
industry there are departures from these hours, the 
period of work in spinning and weaving mills not 
infrequently being twelve hours. 

" In iVustria the law provides that the duration of 
work for factory hands shall not exceed eleven hours 
out of the twenty-four, ' exclusive ' of the periods of 
rest. These are not to be less in the aggregate than 
an hour and a half. The rule can be modified by 



1 8 6 Women Wage- Earners, 

the minister of commerce, in conjunction with the 
minister of the interior, allowing longer hours. The 
hours have been so extended to twelve hours in 
certain industries, such as spinning-mills, and even 
to thirteen in silk manufactories. Sunday rest is 
enforced. In Hungary there is no Kmit laid down 
by law, but the hours are not generally longer than 
in Austria. 

"Concerning the actual hours of adult labor in 
Belgium, some difficulty is said to be experienced in 
getting at the facts. The evidence given before a 
Belgian royal commission showed that railway guards 
are sometimes on duty for fifteen and even nineteen 
and a half hours at a stretch ; and the Brussels tram- 
way-drivers are at work from fifteen to seventeen 
hours daily, with a rest of only an hour and a half at 
noon. Brick-makers work during the summer months 
sixteen hours a day. In the sugar refineries the 
average hours are from twelve to thirteen for men 
and from nine to ten for women. The cabinet- 
makers, both at Ghent and Brussels, assert that 
they have often to work seventeen hours a day. 

*^ In Switzerland the law provides that a normal 
working-day shall not exceed eleven hours, reduced 
on Saturdays and public holidays to ten. Power is 
reserved for prolonging the working-day in certain 
circumstances. Except in cases of absolute necessity 
Sunday labor is prohibited, a^nd in establishments 
where uninterrupted labor is required, each working 



Conditions for Continental Workers. 187 

hand must have one free Sunday out of two. Women 
cannot under any circumstances be employed in night 
or Sunday labor. Italy has not legislated for adults, 
but has made regulations for child labor. Sweden is 
in the same position. Spain and Portugal have done 
nothing. The general rule in the latter country, 
applying to old and young, is to work from sunrise 
to sunset, an hour and a half being allowed for meals. 
In the Netherlands a law was recently promulgated to 
prevent excessive and dangerous work by grown-up 
women and young persons. In Turkey the working- 
day lasts from sunrise to sunset, with certain intervals 
for repose and refreshment. In Russia, where there 
are no laws effecting the hours of adult labor, the 
normal working- day in industrial establishments 
averages twelve hours, though it is often extended 
to fourteen and even sixteen.*' 



1 8 8 Women Wage- Earners. 



CHAPTER IX. 

GENERAL CONDITIONS AMONG WAGE-EARNING 
WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES. 

THE summary already made of the work of 
bureaus of labor and their bearing upon 
women wage-earners includes some points be- 
longing under this head which it still seemed 
advisable to leave where they stand. The work 
of the Massachusetts Bureau gave the keynote, 
followed by all successors, and thus required 
full outlining; and it is from that, as well as 
successors, that general conditions are to be 
determined. A brief summary of such facts as 
each State has investigated and reported upon 
will be given, with the final showing of the 
latest and most general report, — that from the 
United States Bureau of Labor for 1889. 

Beginning with New England and taking 
State by State in the usual geographical order, 
that of Maine for 1888 leads. Work here was 
done by a special commissioner appointed for 



Conditions in the United States. 189 

the purpose, and the chief towns and cities in 
the State were visited. No occupation was 
excluded. The foreign element of the State is 
comparatively small. There is no city in which 
overcrowding and its results in the tenement- 
house system are to be found. Factories are 
numerous, and the bulk of Maine working- 
women are found in them ; the canning indus- 
try employs hundreds, and all trades have their 
proportion of workers. For all of them con- 
ditions are better in many ways than at almost 
any other point in New England, many of them 
living at home and paying but a small propor- 
tion of their wages toward the family support. 

A large proportion of the factories have 
boarding-houses attached, which are run by a 
contractor. A full inspection of these was 
made, and the report pronounces them to be bet- 
ter kept than the ordinary boarding-house, with 
liberal dietary and comfortable rooms. Many 
of the women owned their furniture, and had 
made '* homes" out of the narrow quarters. 
These were the better-paid class of workers. 
Several of the factories have *^ Relief Associa- 
tions," in which the employees pay a small 
sum weekly, which secures them a fixed sum 



1 90 Women Wage-Earners. 

during illness or disability. The conditions, 
as a whole, in factory are more nearly those of 
Massachusetts during the early days of the 
Lowell mills than can be found elsewhere. 

Taking the State as a whole, though the 
average wage is nearly a dollar less a week than 
that of Massachusetts, its buying power is some- 
what more, from the fact that rents are lower 
and the conditions of living simpler, though 
this is true only of remote towns. 

Massachusetts follows ; and here, as in Maine, 
there is general complaint that many of the 
girls live at home, pay little or no board, and 
thus can take a lower wage than the self-sup- 
porting worker. In the large stores employees 
are hired at the lowest possible figure; and 
many girls who are working for from four to 
five dollars per week state that it is impossible 
to pay for room and board with even tolerably 
decent clothing. Hundreds who want pin-money 
do work at a price impossible to the self-sup- 
porting worker, many married women coming 
under this head; and bitter complaint is made 
on this point. At the best the wage is at a 
minimum, and only the most rigid economy 
renders it possible for the earner to live on it. 



Conditions in the United States, igi 

That there is not greater suffering reflects all 
honor on the army of hard-working women, 
pronounced by the commissioner to be as 
industrious, moral, and virtuous a class as the 
community owns, 

" Homes " of every order have been estab- 
lished in Boston and in other large towns in 
the State; and as they give board at the lowest 
rate, they are filled with girls. They are rigid 
as to rules and regulations, and not in favor, as 
a rule, with the majority. Avery slight relax- 
ing of lines and more effort to make them 
cheerful would result in bringing many who 
now remain outside ; but in any case they can 
reach but a small proportion. 

In unskilled labor there is little difference 
among the workers. All alike are half starved, 
half clothed, overworked to a frightful degree ; 
the report specifyingnumbers whose day's work 
runs from fourteen to sixteen hours, and with 
neither time to learn some better method of 
earning a living, nor hope enough to spur them 
on in any new path. This class is found chiefly 
among sewing-women on cheap clothing, bags, 
etc. ; and there is no present means of reaching 
them or altering the conditions which surround 
them. 



192 Women Wage- Earners, 

Connecticut factories are subject to the same 
general laws as those governing like work in 
Maine and Massachusetts. Over thirty thou- 
sand women and girls are engaged in factory 
work, and ten thousand children, — chiefly girls, 
women being twenty-five per cent of all employed 
in factories. Legislation has lessened or abol- 
ished altogether some of the worst features of 
this life, and there are special mills which have 
won the highest reputation for just dealing and 
care of every interest of their employees. But 
the same reasons that affect general conditions 
for all workers exist here also, and produce the 
same results, not only in factory labor, but in all 
other industries open to women. The fact that 
there are no large cities, and thus little over- 
crowding in tenements, and that there is home 
life for a large proportion of the workers, tells 
in their favor. Factory boarding-houses fairly 
well kept abound; but the average wage, 1^6.50, 
is a trifle lower than that of Massachusetts, and 
implies more difficulty in making ends meet. 
Many of the worst abuses in child labor arose in 
Connecticut, and the reports for both 1885 and 
1886 state that for both women and children 
much remains to be done. Clothing here, as 



Conditions in the United States, 193 

elsewhere, is synonymous with overwork and 
underpay, the wage being below subsistence 
point; and want of training is often found to be 
a portion of the reason for these conditions. 

In Rhode Island, as in all the New England 
States, the majority of the factories are in excel- 
lent condition, the older ones alone being open 
to the objections justly made both by employees 
and the reports of the Labor Bureau. The wage 
falls below that of Connecticut, while the general 
conditions of living are practically the same, the 
statements made as to the first applying with 
equal force to the last. Manufactures are the 
chief employment, the largest number of women 
workers being found in these. Of all of them 
the commissioner reports : *^ They work harder 
and more hours than men, and receive much less 
pay/' ^ The fact of no large cities, and thus no 
slums, is in the worker's favor ; but limitations 
are in all other points sharp and continuous. 

New York follows, and for the State at large 
the same remarks apply at every point. It is 
New York City in which focuses every evil that 
hedges about women workers, and in a degree 

1 Third Annual Report of the Commissioner of Industrial 
Statistics of Rhode Island, 1889, p. 22. 

13 



194 Women Wage-Earners, 

not to be found at any other portion of the 
country. These will be dealt with in the proper 
place. The average wage, so far as the State is 
concerned, gives the same result as those already 
mentioned. Manufacturing gives large employ- 
ment; and this is under as favorable conditions 
as in New England, though the average wage is 
nearly a dollar less than that of Massachusetts, 
while expenses are in some ways higher. The 
incessant tide of foreign labor tends steadily to 
lower the wage-rate, and the struggle for mere 
subsistence is the fact for most. 

In New York City, while there is a large pro- 
portion of successful workers, there is an enor- 
mous mass of the lowest order. No other city 
offers so varied a range of employment, and 
there is none where so large a number are found 
earning a wage far below the ** life limit/' 

The better-paying trades are filled with women 
who have had some form of training in school or 
home, or have passed from one occupation to 
another, till that for which they had most apti- 
tude has been determined. That, however, to 
which all the more helpless turn at once, as the 
one thing about the doing of which there can be 
no doubt or difficulty, is the one most over- 



Conditions iri the United States, 195 

crowded, most underpaid, and with its scale of 
payments lessening year by year. The girl too 
ignorant to reckon figures, too dull-witted to 
learn by observation, takes refuge in sewing 
in one of its many forms as the one thing possi- 
ble to all grades of intelligence ; often the need 
of work for older women arises from the death 
or evil habits of the natural head of the family, 
and fortunes have sunk to so low an ebb that at 
times the only clothing left is on the back of the 
worker in the last stages of demoralization. 
Employment in a respectable place thus be- 
comes impossible, and the sole method of 
securing work is through the middlemen or 
sweaters, who ask no questions and require no 
reference, but make as large a profit as can be 
wrung from the helplessness and bitter need of 
those with whom they reckon. 

The difficulties to be faced by the woman 
whose only way of self-support is limited to the 
needle, whether in machine or handwork, are 
fourfold : first, her own incompetency must 
very often head the list, and prevent her from 
securing first-class work ; second, middlemen or 
sweaters lower the price to starvation point; 
third, contract work done in prisons or reforma- 



1 96 Women Wage-Earners. 

tories brings about the same result ; and fourth, 
she is underbid from still another quarter, — ■ that 
of the countrywoman living at home, who takes 
the work at any price offered. 

The Report of the New York Bureau of Labor 
for 1885 contains a mass of evidence so fearful 
in its character, and demonstrating conditions of 
life so tragic for the worker, and so shameful on 
the part of the employer, that general attention 
was for the time aroused. It is impossible here 
to make more than this general statement re- 
ferring all readers to the report itself for full 
detail. Thousands herded together in tenement 
houses and received a daily wage of from twenty- 
five to sixty cents, the day's labor being often 
sixteen hours long. ** The Bitter Cry of Out- 
cast London " found its parallel here, nor has 
there been any diminution of the numbers 
involved, though at some points conditions have 
been inaproved. But the facts recorded in the 
report are practically the same to-day ; and the 
income of many workers falls below two dollars 
a week, from which sum food, clothing, light, 
fuel, and rent are to be provided for. The sum 
and essence of every wrong and injustice that 
can hedge about the worker is found at this 



Conditions in the United States. 197 

point, and remains a problem to every worker 
among the poor, the solving of which will mean 
the solution of the whole labor question. 

New Jersey reports have from the beginning 
followed the phases of the labor movement with 
a keen intelligence and interest. They give 
general conditions as much the same as those of 
New York State. The wage-rate is but ^5 ; and 
Newark especially, a city which is filled with 
manufacturing establishments of every order, 
reproduces some of the evil conditions of New 
York City, though in far less degree. Taking 
the State as a whole, legislation has done much 
to protect the worker, and other reforms are 
persistently urged by the bureau. They are 
needed. In the official report of conditions 
among the linen-thread spinners of Paterson we 
find : ** In one branch of this industry women 
are compelled to stand on a stone floor in water 
the year round, most of the time barefoot, with 
a spray of water from a revolving cylinder flying 
constantly against the breast; and the coldest 
night in winter, as well as the warmest in sum- 
mer, these poor creatures must go to their 
homes with water dripping from their under- 
clothing along their path, because there could 



1 98 Women Wage-Earners. 

not be space or a few moments allowed them 
wherein to change their clothing." ^ 

Thus much for the East; and we turn to the 
West, where some of the most practical and 
suggestive forms of investigation are now in full 
operation. 

1 Report of the Bureau of Labor for the State of New 
Jersey, 1888. 



Conditions in the Western States. 199 



X. 



GENERAL CONDITIONS IN THE WESTERN 
STATES. 

THE reports from Kansas and Wisconsin 
give a wage but slightly above that of 
New Jersey, the weekly average being ^5.27. 
Of the 50,000 women at work in 1889, — the 
number having now nearly doubled, — but 
6,000 were engaged in manufacturing, the 
larger portion being in domestic service. Save 
in one or two of the larger towns and cities, 
there is no overcrowding, and few of the 
conditions that go with a denser population 
and sharper competition. Kansas gives large 
space to general conditions, and, while urging 
better pay, finds that her working-women are, 
as a whole, honest, self-respecting, moral mem- 
bers of the community. Factory workers are 
few in proportion to those in other occupations ; 
and this is true of most of the Western States, 
where general industries are found rather than 
manufactures. 



200 Women Wage-Earners. 

The report from Colorado for 1889 includes 
in its own returns certain facts discovered on 
investigation in Ohio and Indiana, and matched 
by some of the same nature in Colorado. The 
methods of Eastern competition had been 
adopted, and Commissioner Rice reports: — 

" In one of the large cities of Ohio the labor 
commissioners of that State discovered that shirts 
were being made for '^6 cents a dozen; and that 
the rules of one establishment paying such wages 
employing a large number of females, required that 
the day's labor should commence and terminate 
with prayer and thanksgiving.'* 

In Indiana matters appear even worse. By- 
personal investigation, it was found that the 
following rates of wages were being paid in 
manufacturing establishments in Indianapolis : 
For making shirts, 30 to 60 cents a dozen; 
overalls, 40 to 60 cents a dozen pairs ; pants, 
50 cents to ^1.25 per dozen pairs. *' In our 
own State," writes the commissioner, *' owing to 
Eastern competition on the starvation wage 
plan, are found women and girls working for 
mere subsistence, though the prices paid here 
are a shade higher. It is found that shirts 



Conditions in the Western States, 201 

are made at 80 cents a dozen, and summer 
dresses from 25 cents upward." 

Prices are higher here than at almost any- 
other portion of the United States, and thus the 
wage gives less return. In spite of the general 
impression that women fare well at this point, 
the r.eport gives various details which seem to 
prove abuses of many orders. It made special 
investigation into the conditions of domestic 
service, that in hotels and large boarding-houses 
being found to be full of abuses, though condi- 
tions as a whole were favorable. In so new a 
State there are few manufacturing interests ; and 
the factories investigated are many of them re- 
ported as show^ing an almost criminal disregard 
of the comfort and interests of the employees. 
Aside from this, the report indicates much 
the same general conditions as prevail in other 
States. 

In Minnesota, with its average wage of $6 per 
week, there are few factories, — manufacturing 
being confined to clothing, boots and shoes, 
and a few other forms. Domestic service has 
the largest number of women employed, and 
stores and trades absorb the remainder. There 
is no overcrowding save here and there in the 



202 Women Wage- Earners. 

cities, as in St. Paul or Minneapolis, where 
girls often club together in rooming. While 
many of the workers are Scandinavian, many 
are native born ; and for the latter there is 
often much thrift and a comfortable standard 
of living. The same complaints as to lowness 
of wage, resulting from much the same causes 
as those specified elsewhere, are heard; and 
in the clothing manufacture wages are kept 
at the lowest possible point As a whole, the 
returns indicate more comfort than in Colorado, 
but leave full room for betterment. The chap- 
ter on *^ Domestic Service" shows many strong 
reasons why girls prefer factory or general 
work to this; and as the views of heads of 
employment agencies are also given,, unusual 
opportunity is afforded for forming just judg- 
ment in the matter. 

Next on the list comes the report from Cali- 
fornia for 1887 and 1888. The resources of 
the bureau were so limited that it was impossi- 
ble to obtain returns for the whole State, and 
the commissioner therefore limited his inquiry 
to a thorough investigation of the working- 
women of San Francisco, in number about 
twenty thousand. The State has but one 



Conditions in the Western States. 203 

cotton-mill, but there are silk, jute, woollen, 
corset, and shirt factories, with many minor 
industries. Home and general sanitary condi- 
tions were all investigated, the bureau following 
the general lines pursued by all. 

Wages are considered at length ; and Com- 
missioner Tobin states that the rate paid to 
women in California " does not compare favor- 
ably with the rates paid to women in the 
Eastern States, as do the wages of men, for the 
reason that Chinese come more into competi- 
tion with women than with men. This is 
especially the case among seamstresses, and in 
nearly all our factories ... in other lines of 
labor the wages paid to females in this State are 
generally higher than elsewhere." 

Rent, food, and clothing cost more in Cali- 
fornia than in the Eastern States. The wage- 
tables show that the tendency is to limit a 
woman's wage to a dollar a day, even in the 
best paid trades, and as much below this as 
labor can be obtained. 

In shirt-making. Commissioner Tobin states 
that she is worse off than in any of the Eastern 
States. Clothing of all orders pays as little 
as possible, the best workwomen often making 



204 Women Wage- Barriers. 

not over $2.%^ per week. Even at these 
starvation rates, girls prefer factory work to 
domestic service; and as this phase was also 
investigated, we have another chapter of most 
valuable and suggestive information. In spite of 
low wages and all the hardship resulting, working 
women and girls as a whole are found to be 
precisely what the reports state them to be, — 
hard-working, honest, and moral members of 
the community. General conditions are much 
the same as those of Colorado, the summary 
for all the States from which reports have 
come being that the average wage is insuf- 
ficient to allow of much more than mere 
subsistence. 

The labor reports for the State of Missouri 
for 1889 and 1890 do not deal directly with 
the question of women wage-earners; but 
indirectly much light is thrown by the investi- 
gation, in that for 1889, into the cost of living 
and the home conditions of many miners and 
workers in general trades ; while that for 1890 
covers a wider field, and gives, with general 
conditions for all workers, detailed information 
as to many frauds practised upon them. The 
commissioner, Lee Merriweather, is so identified 



Conditions in the Western States. 205 



with the interests of the worker, whether man or 
woman, that a formal report from him on women 
wage-earners would have had especial value. 

Last on the list of State reports comes an 
admirable one from Michigan, prepared by 
Labor Commissioner Henry A. Robinson, issued 
in February, 1892, which devotes nearly two 
hundred pages to women wage-earners, and gives 
careful statistics of 137 different trades and 378 
occupations. Personal* visits were made to 
13,436 women and girls living in the most im- 
portant manufacturing towns and cities of the 
State ; and the blanks, which were prepared in 
the light of the experience gained by the work 
of other bureaus, contained 129 questions, classi- 
fied as follows: social, 28; industrial, 12; hours 
of labor, 14; economic, 54; sanitary, 21; and 
seven other questions as to dress, societies, 
church attendance, with remarks and suggestions 
by the women workers. The result is a very 
minute knowledge of general conditions, the 
series of tables given being admirably pre- 
pared. In those on the hours of labor it is 
found that domestic service exacts the greatest 
number of hours ; one class returning fourteen 
hours as the rule. In this lies a hint of the 



2o6 Women Wage-Earners. 

increasing objection to domestic service, — 
longer hours and less freedom being the chief 
counts against it. The final summary gives 
the average wage for the State as ^4.86; the 
highest weekly average for women workers 
employed as teachers or in public positions 
being $10.78. 

The remarks and suggestions of the women 
themselves are extraordinarily helpful. Outside 
the cities organization among them is unknown ; 
but it is found that those trades which are organ- 
ized furnish the best paid and most intelligent 
class of girls, who conceived at once the benefits 
of a labor bureau, and answered fully and 
promptly. The hours of work in all industries 
ranged from nine to ten, and the wage paid was 
found to be a little more than fifty per cent less 
than that of men engaged in the same work. A 
large proportion supported relatives, and general 
conditions as to living were of much the same 
order of comfort and discomfort as those given in 
other reports. The fact that this report is the 
latest on this subject, and more minute in detail 
than has before been possible, makes it invalua- 
ble to the student of social conditions; and it is 
entertaining reading, even for the average reader. 



Conditions in the Western States. 207 

We come now to the final report, in some 
ways a summary of all, — that of the United 
States Labor Department at Washington, and 
the work for 1889. 

In the twenty-two cities investigated by the 
agents of this bureau, the average age at which 
girls began work was found to be 15 years and 
4 months. Charleston, S. C, gives the highest 
average, it being there 18 years and 7 months, 
and Newark, N. J., the lowest, — 14 years and 7 
months. The average period in which all had 
been engaged in their present occupations is 
shown to be 4 years and 9 months ; while of the 
total number interviewed, 9,540 were engaged in 
their first attempt to earn a living. 

As against the opinion often expressed that 
foreign workers are in the majority, we find that 
of the whole number given, 14,120 were native 
born. Of- the foreign born, Ireland is most 
largely represented, having 936; and Germany 
comes next, with 775. In the matter of parentage, 
12,907 had foreign-born mothers. The number 
of single women included in the report is 15,387; 
745 were married, and 2,038 widowed, from 
which it is evident that, as a rule, it is single 
women who are fighting the industrial fight alone. 



2o8 Women Wage- Earners. 

They are not only supporting themselves, but are 
giving their earnings largely to the support of 
others at home. More than half — 8,754 — do 
this ; and 9,813, besides their occupation, help 
in the home housekeeping. Of the total num- 
ber, 4,928 live at home, but only 701 of them 
receive aid or board from their families. The aver- 
age number in these families is 5.25, and each 
contains 2.48 workers. 

Concerning education, church attendance, 
home and shop conditions, 15,831 reported. 
Of these, 10,458 were educated in American 
pubHc schools, and 5,375 in other schools; 
5,854 attend Protestant churches; 7,769 the 
Catholic, and 367 the Hebrew. A very large 
percentage, comprehending 3,209, do not attend 
church at all. 

In home conditions 12,120 report themselves 
as ''comfortable,*' while 4,692 give home con- 
ditions as '' poor.'' '* Poor," to the ordinary 
observer, is to be interpreted as wretched, includ- 
ing overcrowding, and all the numberless evils 
of tenement-house life, which is the portion of 
many. A side light is thrown on personal char- 
acteristics of the workers, in the tables of 
earnings and lost time. Out of 12,822 who 



Conditions in the Western States. 209 

reported, 373 earn less than ^100 a year, and 
this class has an average of 86.5 lost days for 
the year covered by the investigation. With the 
increase of earnings, the lost time decreases, the 
2,147 who earn from ^200 to ^450 losing but 
37.8; while 398, earning from $350 to $500 a 
year, lost but 18.3 days. 

Deliberate cruelty and injustice on the part of 
the employer are encountered only now and 
then ; but competition forces the working in as 
inexpensive a manner as possible, and thus often 
makes what must sum up as cruelty and injustice 
necessary to the continued existence of the 
employer as an industrial factor. Home condi- 
tions are seldom beyond tolerable, and very 
often intolerable. Inspection, — the efficiency 
of which has greatly increased, — the demand 
by the organized charities at all points for 
women inspectors, and the gradual growth of 
popular interest are bringing about a few 
improvements, and will bring more ; but the 
mass everywhere are as stated. Ignorance and 
the vices that accompany ignorance — want of 
thoroughness, unpunctuality, thriftlessness, and 
improvidence — are all in the count against the 
lowest order of worker; but the better class, 

14 



2IO Women Wage- Earners. 

and indeed the large proportion of the lower, are 
living honest, self-respecting, infinitely dreary 
lives. 

It is a popular belief, already referred to else- 
where, that the working-women form a large 
proportion of the numbers who fill houses of 
prostitution ; and that '' night-walkers *' are 
made up chiefly from the same class. Nothing 
could be further from the truth, — the testimony 
of the fifteenth annual report of the Massachu- 
setts Bureau of Labor being in the same line as 
that of all in which investigation of the subject 
has been made, and all confirming the opinion 
given. The investigation of the Massachusetts 
Bureau in fourteen cities showed clearly that a 
very small proportion among working-women 
entered this life. The largest number, classed 
by occupations, came from the lowest order of 
worker, those employed in housework and hotels ; 
and the next largest was found among seam- 
stresses, employees of shirt-factories, and 
cloak-makers, all of these industries in which 
under pay is proverbial. The great majority, 
receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn 
it by seldom less than ten hours a day of hard 
labor, and not only live on the sum, but assist 



Conditions in the Western States. 2 1 1 



friends, contribute to general household expenses, 
dress so as to appear fairly well, and have learned 
every art of doing without. More than this, 
since the deepening interest in their lives, and 
the formation of working-girls' clubs and socie- 
ties of many orders, they contribute from this 
scanty sum enough to rent meeting-rooms, pay 
for instruction in many classes, and provide a 
relief fund for sick and disabled members. 

This is the summary of conditions as a whole, 
and we pass now to the specific evils and abuses 
in trades and general industries. 



2 1 2 Women Wage-Earners. 



XI. 



SPECIFIC EVILS AND ABUSES IN FACTORY LIFE 
AND IN GENERAL TRADES. 

"TTAS civilization civilized?*' is the invol- 
-LA untary question, as one by one the fear- 
ful conditions hedging about workers on either 
side of the sea become apparent. At once, in 
any specific investigation, we face abuses for 
which the system of production rather than the 
employer is often responsible, and for which 
science has as yet found either none or but a 
partial remedy. Alike in England and on the 
Continent work and torture become synonyms, 
and flesh and blood the cheapest of all nine- 
teenth-century products. The best factory 
system swarms with problems yet unsolved; 
the worst, as it may be found in many a remote 
district of the Continent and even in England 
itself, is appalling in both daily fact and final 
result. It would seem at times as if the work- 
shop meant only a form of preparation for the 



Evils and Abuses, 213 

hospital, the workhouse, and the prison, since 
the workers therein become inoculated with 
trade diseases, mutilated by trade appliances, 
and corrupted by trade associates, till no 
healthy fibre, mental, moral, or physical, 
remains. 

In the nail and chain making districts of 
England, Sundays are often abolished where 
these furnaces flame, and such rest as can be 
stolen comes on the cinder-heaps. But these 
workers are few compared with the myriads 
who must battle with the most insidious and 
most potent of enemies, — the dust of modern 
manufacture. There is dust of heckling flax, 
with an average of only fourteen years of work 
for the strongest; dust of emery powder, that 
has been known to destroy in a month ; dust of 
pottery and sand and flint, so penetrating that 
the medical returns give cases of "stone" for 
new-born babes; dust of rags foul with dirt 
and breeding fever in the picker; dust of wools 
from diseased animals, striking down the sorter. 
Wood, coal, flour, each has its own, penetrat- 
ing where it can never be dislodged; and a less 
tangible enemy lurks in poisonous paints for 
flowers or wall-paper, and in white lead, the 



214 Women Wage- Earners. 

foundation of other paints, — blotching the 
skin of children, and ending for many in 
blindness, paralysis, and hideous sores. 

This is one form ; and side by side with it 
comes another, dealt with here and there, but 
as a rule ignored, — vapors as deadly as dust ; 
vapors of muriatic acid from pickling tins; of 
choking chlorine from bleaching-rooms; of gas 
and phosphorus, which even now, where strong- 
est preventives are used, still pull away both 
teeth and jaws from many a worker in match- 
factories; while acids used in cleaning, bleach- 
ing-powders, and many an industry where 
women and children chiefly are employed, eat 
into hands and clothing, and make each hour a 
torture. 

With the countless forms of machinery for 
stamping and rolling and cutting and sawing, 
there is yet, in spite of all the safeguards the 
law compels, the saying still heard in these 
shops : '* It takes three fingers to make a 
stamper." Carelessness often; but where two 
must work together, as is necessary in tending 
many of these machines, the partner's inat- 
tention is often responsible, and mutilation 
comes through no fault of one's own. Add 



Evils and Abuses. 215 

to all these the suffering of little children 
taught lace-making at four, sewing on but- 
tons or picking threads far into the night, 
and driven through the long hours that they 
may add sixpence to the week's wage, and 
we have a hint of the grewsome catalogue 
of the human woe born of human need and 
human greed. 

For the United States there is a steadily 
lessening proportion of these evils, and we 
shall deal chiefly with those found in existence 
by the respective bureaus of labor at the time 
when their investigations were made. Private 
and public investigation made before their 
organization had brought to light in Connecti- 
cut, and at many points in New England, gross 
abuses both in child labor and that of woman 
and girl workers. It is sufficient, however, 
for our purpose to refer the reader to the men- 
tion of these contained in the first report of 
the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, as well as 
to Dr. Richard T. Ely's '* History of the Labor 
Movement in America," and to pass at once to 
the facts contained in the fifteenth report from 
Massachusetts. 

The ventilation of factories and of work- 



2 1 6 Women Wage- Earners. 

rooms in general is one of the first points 
considered. Naturally, facts of this order 
would be found in the testimony only of the 
more intelligent. Where factories are new 
and built expressly for their own purposes, 
ventilation is considered, and in many is excel- 
lent. But in smaller ones and in many indus- 
tries the structures used were not intended 
for this purpose. Closely built buildings shut 
off both light and air, which must come wholly 
from above, thus preventing circulation, and 
producing an effect both depressing and wear- 
ing. The agents in a number of cases found 
employees packed "like sardines in a box;" 
thirty-five persons, for example, in a small 
attic without ventilation of any kind. Some 
were in very low-studded rooms, with no venti- 
lation save from windows, causing bad draughts 
and much sickness, and others in basements 
where dampness was added to cold and bad 
air. 

In many cases the nature of the trade com- 
pelled closed windows, and no provision was 
made for ventilation in any other way. In one 
case girls were working in ''little pens all 
shelved over, without sufficient light or air. 



Evils and Abuses. 217 

windows not being open, for fear of cooling 
wax thread used on sewing-machines."^ 

For a large proportion of the workrooms 
visited or reported upon was a condition rang- 
ing from dirty to filthy. In some where men 
and women were employed together in tailor- 
ing, the report reads : '* Their shop is filthy and 
unfit to work in. There are no conveniences 
for women; and men and women use the same 
closets, wash-basins, and drinking-cups, etc. "^ 
In another a water-closet in the centre of the 
room filled it with a sickening stench; yet 
forty hands were at work here, and there are 
many cases in which the location of these 
closets and the neglect of proper disinfect- 
ants make not only workrooms but factories 
breeding-grounds of disease. 

Lack of ventilation in almost all industries 
is the first evil, and one of the most insidious. 
Other points affecting health are found in the 
nature of certain of the trades and the condi- 
tions under which they must be carried on. 
Feather-sorters, fur-workers, cotton-sorters, all 

^ Fifteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of 
Labor, p. 68. 
2 Ibid. 



2 1 8 Women Wage- Earners, 

workers on any material that gives off dust, are 
subject to lung and bronchial troubles. In 
soap-factories the girls' hands are eaten by the 
caustic soda, and by the end of the day the fin- 
gers are often raw and bleeding. In making 
buttons, pins, and other manufactures of this 
nature, there is always liability of getting the 
fingers jammed or caught. For the first three 
times the wounds are dressed without charge. 
After that the person injured must pay ex- 
penses. In these and many other trades work 
must be so closely watched that it brings on 
weakness of the eyes, so that many girls are 
under treatment for this. 

In bakeries the girls stand from ten to six- 
teen hours a day, and break down after a short 
time. Boots and shoes oblige being on the 
feet all day; and this is the case for sales- 
women, cash-girls, and all factory-workers. In 
type-founderies the air is always filled with a 
fine dust produced by rubbing, and the girls 
employed have no color in their faces. In 
paper-box making constant standing brings on 
the same difficulties found among all workers 
who stand all day; and they complain also of 
the poison often resulting from the coloring 



Evils and Abuses. 2ig 

matter used in making the boxes. In book- 
binderies, brush-manufactories, etc., the work 
soon breaks down the girls. 

In the clothing-business, where the running 
of heavy sewing-machines is done by foot- 
power, there is a fruitful source of disease; and 
even where steam is used, the work is exhaust- 
ing, and soon produces weakness and various 
difficulties. 

In food preparations girls who clean and 
pack fish get blistered hands and fingers from 
the saltpetre employed by the fishermen. 
Others in "working-stalls" stand in cold water 
all day, and have the hands in cold water; and 
in laundries, confectionery establishments, etc., 
excessive heat and standing in steam make 
workers especially liable to throat and lung 
diseases, as well as those induced by continu- 
ous standing. 

Straw goods produce a fine dust, and cause a 
constant hacking among the girls at work upon 
them ; and the acids used in setting the colors 
often produce "acid sores'' upon the ends of 
the fingers. 

In match-factories, as already mentioned, 
even with the usual precautions, necrosis often 



2 20 Women Wage-Earners, 

attacks the worker, and the jaw is eaten away. 
Sores, ulcerations, and suffering of many 
orders are the portion of workers in chemicals. 
In many cases a little expenditure on the part 
of the employer would prevent this ; but unless 
brought up by an inspector, no precautions are 
taken. 

The question of seats for saleswomen comes 
up periodically, has been at some points legis- 
lated upon, and is in most stores ignored or 
evaded. "The girls look better, — more as if 
they were ready for work,'' is the word of one 
employer, who frankly admitted that he did 
not mean they should sit; and this is the opin- 
ion acted upon by most. Insufficient time for 
meals is a universal complaint; and nine times 
out of ten, the conveniences provided are in- 
sufficient for the numbers who must use them, 
and thus throw off offensive and dangerous 
effluvia. 

It is one of the worst evils in shop life, not 
only for Massachusetts, but for the entire 
United States, that in all large stores, where 
fixed rules must necessarily be adopted, girls 
are forced to ask men for permission to go to 
closets, and often must run the gauntlet of men 



Evils and Abuses. 221 

and boys. All physicians who treat this class 
testify to the fact that many become seriously 
diseased as the result of unwillingness to sub- 
ject themselves to this ordeal. 

One of the ablest factory-inspectors in this 
country, or indeed in any country, Mrs. Fanny 
B. Ames of Boston, reports this as one of the 
least regarded points in a large proportion of 
the factories and manufacturing establishments 
visited, but adds that it arises often from pure 
ignorance and carelessness, and is remedied as 
soon as attention is called to it. 

Taking up the other New England reports in 
which reference to these evils is found, the tes- 
timony is the same. Law is often evaded or 
wholly set aside, — at times through careless- 
ness, at others wilfully. The most exhaustive 
treatment of this subject in all its bearings is 
found in the report of the New Jersey Bureau 
of Labor for 1889, the larger portion of it be- 
ing devoted to the fullest consideration of the 
hygiene of occupation, the diseases peculiar to 
special trades, and general sanitary conditions 
and methods of working, not only in *' danger- 
ous, unhealthy, or noxious trades," but in all. 
Commissioner Bishop, from whose report quo- 



222 Women Wage- Earners. 

tat ions have already been made (p. 197), gives 
many instances of working under fearful condi- 
tions, absolutely destructive to health and often 
to morals ; and the report may be regarded as 
one of the most authoritative words yet spoken 
in this direction. 

The Factory Inspection Law for the State of 
New York, in detail much the same as that of 
Massachusetts, is sufficiently full and explicit 
to secure to all workers better conditions than 
any as yet attained save in isolated cases. 
There is, however, constant violation of its 
most vital points; and this must remain true 
for all States, until the number of inspectors 
is made in some degree adequate to the demand. 
At present they are not only seriously over- 
worked, but find it impossible to cover the 
required ground. The law which stands at 
present as the demand to be made by all fac- 
tory-workers and all interested in intelligent 
legislation, will be found in the Appendix. 

Destructive to health and morals as are often 
the factories and workshops in which women 
must work, they play far less part in their lives 
than the homes afforded by the great cities, 
where the poor herd in quarters, — at their best 



Evils and Abuses, 223 

only tolerable shelters, at their worst unfit for 
man or beast. It is the tenement-house question 
that in these words presents itself for consider- 
ation, and that makes part of the general prob- 
lem. Taking New York as illustrative of some 
of the w^orst forms of over-crowding, though 
Boston and Chicago are not far behind, we 
turn to the work of one of the closest and most 
competent of observers, Dr. Annie S. Daniel, 
for many years physician in charge of out-prac- 
tice for the New York Infirmary for Women 
and Children. The report of this practice for 
1891 includes a series of facts bearing vitally 
on every phase of woman's labor. Known as 
an expert in these directions, her testimony 
was called for in the examination of 1893 into 
the sweating-system of New York, made by a 
congressional committee and now on record in 
a report to be had on application to the New 
York Congressmen at Washington.^ For years 
she has watched the effects of child-labor, tak- 
ing hundreds of measurements of special cases, 
and studying the effects of the life mothers 

1 House of Representatives Report No. 2309 : Report of 
the Committee on Manufactures on the Sweating- System, 
House of Representatives, January, 1893. 



2 24 Women Wage-Earners. 

and children alike were compelled to live. 
"The medical problems/' she writes, '^ which 
present themselves to the physician are so 
closely connected with the social problems that 
it is impossible to study one alone. The peo- 
ple are sick because of insufficient food and 
clothing and unsanitary surroundings, and 
these conditions exist because the people are 
poor. They are often poor because they have 
no work,'^ At another point, commenting on 
drinking among the poor, she writes: "Drink- 
ing among the women is increasing. In the 
majority of cases we have studied, it has been 
the effect of poverty, not the cause.'' 

In the region between Houston Street and 
Canal Street, known now to be the most thickly 
populated portion of the inhabited globe, every 
house is a factory ; that is, some form of manu- 
facture is going on in every room. The aver- 
age family of five adds to itself from two to ten 
more, often a sewing-machine to each person ; 
and from six or seven in the morning till far 
into the night work goes on, — usually the 
manufacture of clothing. Here contagious 
diseases pass from one to another. Here babies 
are born and babies die, the work never paus- 



Evils and Abuses, 225 

ing save for death and hardly for that. In one 
of these homes Dr. Daniel found a family of 
five making cigars, the mother included. '' Two 
of the children were ill of diphtheria. Both 
parents attended to these children ; they would 
syringe the nose of each child, and without 
washing their hands return to their cigars. 
We have repeatedly observed the same thing 
when the work was manufacturing clothing 
and undergarments to be bought as well by the 
rich as by the poor. Hand-sewed shoes, made 
for a fashionable Broadway shoe-store, were 
sewed at home by a man in whose family were 
three children sick with scarlet -fever. And 
such instances are common. Only death or 
lack of work closes tenement-house manufac- 
tories. . . . When we consider that stopping 
this work means no food and no roof over their 
heads, the fact that the disease may be carried 
by their work cannot be expected to impress 
the people." 

Farther on in the report, she adds: "The 
people can neither be moral nor healthy until 
they have decent homes.'' Yet the present 
wage-rate makes decent homes impossible; and 
though Brooklyn and Boston have a few model 

15 



2 26 Women Wage- Earners. 

tenement-houses, New York has none, the ex- 
periment of making over in part a few old ones 
hardly counting save in intention. Into these 
homes respectable, ambitious, hard-working 
girls and women are compelled to go. That 
they live decent lives speaks worlds for the 
intrinsic goodness and purity of nature which 
in the midst of conditions intolerable to every 
sense still preserves these characteristics. 
That they must live in such surroundings is 
one of the deepest disgraces of civilization. 

As to wages, concerning which there seems 
to be a general opinion that steady rise has 
gone on, we find Dr. Daniel giving the rates 
for many years. She writes : — - 

" Wages have steadily decreased. Among the 
women who earned the whole or part of the income, 
finishing pantaloons was the most common occupa- 
tion. For this work, in 1881, they received ten to 
fifteen cents a pair; for the same work in 1891, three 
to five, at the most ten cents a pair. The women 
doing this work claim that wages are reduced because 
of the influx of Italian women, but few Italian women 
do the poor quality of trousers. While we are glad to 
note some excellent sanitary changes in the tenement- 
house construction, the people we believe to be just 
as poor, just as overcrowded and wretched to-day, as 



Evils and Abuses. 227 

in 1 88 1 and 1853, the only difference being that there 
are a greater number of people who are poor now." 

These statements apply in great part to un- 
skilled labor; but there is always in these 
houses a large proportion of skilled labor dis- 
abled by sickness or other causes and out of 
work for the time being. The wage at best 
for skilled labor is given by the Labor Commis- 
sioner as $5.29. Let any one study the possi- 
bilities of this sum per week, and the wonder 
will arise, not why living is not easier, but how 
it goes on at all. 

Specific evils speak for themselves, and are 
gradually being eliminated. They are before 
the eyes, and the least experienced student may 
gauge their bearing and judge their effects. 
But wider-reaching than any or all the worst 
abuses of the worst trades is the wrong done 
to the child and to family life as a whole, by 
the continuous labor of married women in fac- 
tories, or at any occupation which demands, 
for ten hours or more a day, unremitting toil. 
At all points where scientific observation has 
been made the expert lifts up a warning voice. 
It is the future of the race that is in ques- 
tion. Child labor, while not entering directly 



2 28 Women Wage- Earners, 

into our present examination, is, as has already 
been said, inextricably bound up with the ques- 
tion of woman's work and wages. The two must 
be studied together; and for our own country 
there are already admirable monographs on 
this subject,^ two authoritative ones coming 
from the American Economic Association, and 
one hardly less so from a close and keen obser- 
ver whose scientific training gives her equal 
right to form conclusions. ^ 

A dispassionate observer, Mr. W. Stanley 
Jevons, whose conclusions are founded on long 
investigation and deduction, years ago wrote 
words which he has at various times empha- 
sized and repeated, and which sum up the evils 
to which the infancy of the children of over- 
worked mothers is subject, as well as the con- 
sequences to the State in which they are born, 
and which faces the results of the system which 
produces them. He writes as follows : — 

" We can help evolution by the aid of its own high- 
est and latest product, — science. When all the 

1 Child Labor. By V^illiam F. Willoughby, A.B, Child 
Labor. By Miss Clare de Grafenried-. Publications of the 
American Economic Association, vol. v. no. 2. 

2 Our Toiling Children. By Florence Kelley, W. C. T. U. 
Publishing Association, Chicago. 



Evils and Abuses, 229 

teaching of medical and social science lead us to 
look upon the absence of the mother from the home 
as the cause of the gravest possible evils, can we be 
warranted in standing passively by, allowing this evil 
to work itself out to the bitter end, by the process of 
natural selection? Something might perhaps be said 
in favor of the present apathetic mode of viewing this 
question, if natural selection were really securing the 
survival of the fittest, so that only the weakly babes 
were killed off, and the strong ones well brought up. 
But it is much to be feared that no infants ever really 
recover from the test of virtual starvation to which 
they are so ruthlessly exposed. The vital powers are 
irreparably crippled, and the infant grows up a stunted, 
miserable specimen of humanity, the prey to every 
physical and moral evil." ^ 

It is hardly necessary to go on specifying 
special violations of sanitary law or special 
illustrative cases. The Report of the New 
York Bureau of Labor for 1885 is a maga- 
zine of such cases, — a summary of all the 
horrors that the worst conditions can include. 
Aside from the revolting pictures of the life 
lived from day to day by the workers them- 
selves, it gives in detail case after case of 

1 Married Women in Factories. By W. Stanley Jevons, 
Contemporary Review, vol. xli. pp 37-53. 



230 Women Wage- Earners. 

rapacity and over-reaching on the part of the 
employers ; and parallel ones may be found in 
every labor report which has touched upon the 
subject. 

In New York a "Working Woman's Protec- 
tive Union," formed more than twenty-five 
years ago, has done unceasing work in settling 
disputed claims and collecting wages unjustly 
withheld. No case is entered on their books 
which has not been examined by their lawyer, 
and thus only well grounded complaints find 
record; but with even these precautions the 
records show nearly fifty thousand adjudicated 
since they began work. Many cities have 
special committees, in the organized charities, 
who seek to cover the same ground, but who 
find it impossible to do all that is required. 
From East and West alike, complaints are 
practically the same. It is not only women in 
trades, but those in domestic service, who are 
recorded as suffering every form of oppression 
and injustice. Colorado and California, Kan- 
sas and Wisconsin, speak the same word. With 
varying industries wrongs vary, but the general 
summary is the same. 

The system of fines, while on general princi- 



Evils and Abuses. 231 

pies often just, has been used by unscrupulous 
employers to such a degree as to bring the 
week's wages down a third or even half. It 
is impossible to give illustrative instances in 
detail; but all who deal with girls, in clubs 
and elsewhere, report that the system requires 
modification. 

On the side of the employers, and as bearing 
also on the evils which are most marked among 
women workers, we may quote from the Gov- 
ernment Report, "Working Women in Large 
Cities": — 

" Actual ill-treatment by employers seems to be 
infrequent. . . . Foreigners are often found to be 
more considerate of their help than native-born men, 
and the kindest proprietor in the world is a Jew of the 
better class. In some shops week-workers are locked 
out for the half-day if late, or docked for every min- 
ute of time lost, an extra fine being often added. 
Piece workers have great freedom as to hours, and 
employers complain much of tardiness and absentee- 
ism. The mere existence of health and labor laws 
insures privileges formerly unheard of; half-holidays 
in summer, vacation with pay, and shorter hours are 
becoming every year more frequent, better workshops 
are constructed, and more comfortable accommoda- 
tions are being furnished." 



232 Women Wage- Earners ^ 

This is most certainly true, but more 
light shows the shadows even more clearly; 
and the fact remains that every force must 
be brought to bear, to remedy the evils de- 
picted in the reports of the bureaus quoted 
here. 

The general conditions of working-women 
in New York retail stores were reported upon, 
in 1890, by a committee from the Working- 
Woman's Society, at 2"] Clinton Place, New 
York. The report was read at a mass meeting 
held at Chickering Hall, May 6, 1890; and its 
statements represent general conditions in all 
the large cities of the United States. It is 
impossible to give more than the principal 
points of the report; but readers can obtain it 
on application to the Secretary of the Associa- 
tion.^ These are as follows: — 

Hours are often excessive, and employees 
are not paid for over-time. Many stores give 
no half-holiday, and keep open on Saturdays 
till ten and eleven o'clock in the evening, and 
at the holiday season do this for three or four 
weeks nightly. 

^ Miss Alice W^oodbridge, Secretary of the W"orking-Wo- 
man^s Society, 27 Clinton Place, New York. 



Evils and Abuses. 233 

Sanitary conditions are usually bad, and 
include bad ventilation, unsanitary arrange- 
ments, and indifference to the considerations 
of decency. Toilet arrangements in many 
stores are horrible, and closets for male and 
female are often side by side, with only slight 
partition between. One hand-basin and towel 
serve for all. Often water for drink can be 
obtained only from the attic. 

Numbers of children under age are employed 
for excessive hours, and at work far beyond 
their strength, an investigation having shown 
that over one hundred thousand children under 
the legal age of fourteen were at work in fac- 
tories, workshops, and stores. 

Service for a number of years often meets 
with no consideration, but is regarded as a 
reason for dismissal. It is the rule in some 
stores to keep no one over five years, lest they 
come to feel that they have some claim on the 
firm; and when a saleswoman is dismissed 
from one house, she finds it almost impossible 
to obtain employment in another. 

The wages are reduced by excessive fines, 
employers placing a value upon time lost that 
is not given to services rendered. The fines 



234 Women Wage- Earners. 

run from five to thirty cents for a few minutes' 
tardiness. In some stores the fines are divided 
at the end of the year between the timekeeper 
and the superintendent, and there is thus every 
temptation to injustice. 
The report concludes : — ^ 

*^ We find that, through low wages, long hours, 
unwholesome sanitary conditions, and the discourag- 
ing effect of excessive fines, not only is the physical 
condition injured, but the tendency is to injure the 
moral well-being. It is simply impossible for a 
woman to live without assistance on the low salary a 
saleswoman earns, without depriving herself of real 
necessities.'* 

These were the conditions which, in 1889, 
led to the formation of the little society which, 
though limited in numbers, has done admirable 
and efficient work, its latest effort being to 
secure from the Assembly at Albany a bill 
making inspection of stores and shops as 
obligatory as that of factories. 

It was through the concerted effort of its 
members that the Factory Inspection Act be- 
came a law, though not without violent opposi- 
tion. The bill originated in the Working- 
Woman's Society, was drawn up there, sent to 



Evils and Abuses, 235 

Albany by its delegates, and passed without 
the aid of money. 

There are eleven thousand factories in New 
York State, and only one inspector to investi- 
gate their condition; while in England, scarce 
larger in territory, forty-one inspectors are 
appointed by the Government. 

The Andrus bill, adding to the power of 
factory inspectors, raising the working age of 
children to fourteen years, and prohibiting 
night work for girls under twenty- one and boys 
under eighteen, was sent with the Factory Bill 
to the Central Labor Union, and the women 
were largely instrumental in obtaining the pas- 
sage of the measure. 

Why such determined opposition still meets 
every attempt to bring about the same inspec- 
tion for mercantile establishments cannot be 
determined; but thus far, though admitted to 
be necessary, the act has at each reading been 
laid upon the table. Another effort will be 
made in the coming winter of 1893-94. 

In spite, however, of much agitation of all 
phases of woman's work, it is only some wrong 
as startling as that involved in the sweating- 
system that seems able to arouse more than a 



2 36 Women Wage-Earners. 

temporary interest. One of the most able and 
experienced women inspectors of the United 
States Bureau of Labor, Miss de Grafenried, 
has lately written: — 

" It is an open question whether woman's pay is 
not falling, cost and standards of living considered. 
Could partly supported labor and children be elimi- 
nated, shop employees would get higher rates. Still 
there are other economic anomalies that affect 
women's wages. ^ Wholesalers ' and manufacturers 
shut up their factories and ' give out ' everything — 
umbrellas, coats, hair- wigs, and shrouds — to be made, 
— they know not in what den, or wrung they care 
not from what misery. . . . Again, wages are de- 
pressed by over -stimulating piece-work; and its 
unscrupulous use by proprietors who hesitate to con- 
fess to paying women only ^3 or ^4 a week, yet who 
scale prices so that only experts can earn that sum. 
Many employers cut rates as soon as, by desperate 
exertions, operatives clear $5 a week. Then, under- 
bidding from the unemployed is a fruitful source of 
low wages. Massachusetts has 20 per cent of her 
workers unemployed." 

These conditions, while varying as to num- 
bers, are practically the same for the work of 
women in all parts of the United States, and 
are matters of increasing perplexity and sorrow 



Evils and Abuses. 237 

to every searcher into these problems. At its 
best, woman's work in industries is intermit- 
tent, since it is only textile work that continues 
the year round ; dress and cloak making, shoe 
and umbrella making, fur-sewing and milli- 
nery, have specific seasons, in the intervals 
between which the worker waits and starves, 
or, if too desperate, goes upon the streets, 
driven there by the wretched competitive sys- 
tem, the evils of which increase in direct ratio 
to the longing for speedy wealth. In short, 
matters are at that point where only radical 
change of methods can better the situation, 
even the most conservative observer, relying 
most thoroughly upon evolution, feeling some- 
thing more than evolution must work if justice 
is to have place in the present social scheme. 

It is at this point that some consideration 
of domestic service naturally presents itself. 
Though regarded often as no part of the labor 
question,, there can be no other head under 
which to range it, since the last census gives 
over a million persons engaged in this occupa- 
tion, the lowest rough estimate of wages being 
1^160,000,000 and the support included form- 
ing a sum at least as large. It is through the 



238 Women Wage-Earners. 

hands of the domestic servant that a large part 
of the finished products of other forms of labor 
must pass, and the economic aspects of the 
question grow in importance with every year 
of the changing conditions of American life. 
In no other occupation is a just consideration 
of the points involved so difficult a task, since 
the mistress who faces the incompetence, in- 
subordination, and all the other trials involved 
in the relation, suffers too keenly from the 
sense of individual wrong to treat the matter 
in the large. Till it is so treated, however, 
understanding for both sides is impossible, 
and to bring about such understanding is the 
first necessity for all. 

From the employer's standpoint the advan- 
tages to be stated are as follows : First and 
most obvious is the fact that wages are not 
only relatively but absolutely high; for aside 
from the actual cash there are also board, 
lodging, fuel, light, and laundry, all of which 
the worker in trades must provide for herself. 
There is no capital required, as for type-writer, 
sewing-machine, or any appliances for work, 
nor is the girl forced to expend anything in 
preparation, since under the present system 



Evils and Abuses, 239 

housekeepers take her untrained fresh from 
Castle Garden, and willingly give the needed 
instruction, at the same time paying the same 
wage as that given to competent service. Pro- 
fessor Lucy Salmon, of Vassar, who has devoted 
much time to this subject, reports that, on ex- 
amination of testimony from three thousand 
employees, it is found that on a wage of $3.25 
a week it is possible to save annually nearly 
$150 "in an occupation involving no outlay, 
no investment of capital, and few or no per- 
sonal expenses/* The wages received are 
relatively higher than those of other occupa- 
tions; for in Professor Salmon's comparison of 
wages received by three thousand country and 
the same number of city employees it was 
found that of six thousand teachers in the 
public schools the average salary actually paid 
is less than that paid to the average cook in a 
large city. 

The second advantage lies in the healthful- 
ness of the work, which includes not only regu- 
larity but variety; the third, that a home, at 
least in all externals, is insured; the fourth, 
that a training which makes the worker more 
fit for married life is certain; and a fifth, that 



240 Women Wage-Earners^ 

the work is congenial and easy for those whose 
tastes lie in this direction. 

These are the facts that are constantly urged 
upon the army of under-paid, half-starving 
needlewomen in our great cities, and no less 
upon another army of girls in shops and fac- 
tories, who are implored to consider the 
advantages of domestic service and to give up 
their unnecessary battle with the limitations 
hedging in every other form of labor. Aston- 
ishment that the girls prefer the factory and 
shop is unending, nor is it regarded as possible 
that substantial reason may and must exist for 
such choice. As a means of arriving at some 
solution of the problem, some six hundred em- 
ployees of every order were interviewed, under 
circumstances which made their replies perfectly 
free and full ; and the results tallied exactly with 
others obtained by an inquiry in the Philadel- 
phia Working-Woman's Guild, a society then 
representing seventy-two distinct occupations. 

A report of this inquiry was made by Mrs. 
Eliza S. Turner, the President of the Guild, 
and is given as the most suggestive view of the 
whole subject yet secured. She writes as 
follows: — 



Evils and Abuses. 241 

^^ Why do not intelligent, refined girls more fre- 
quently choose house service as a support ? " The 
replies here given are as nearly as possible verbatim : 

1. Loss of freedom. This is as dear to women as to 
men, although we don't get so much of it. The day 
of a saleswoman or a factory hand may be long, but 
when it is done she is her own mistress ; but in service, 
except when she is actually out of the house, she has 
no hour, no minute, when her soul is her own. 

2. Hurts to self-respect. One thing that makes 
housework unpleasant — chamber- work, for instance, 
and waiting on table — is that it is a kind of personal 
service, one human being waiting on another. The 
very thing you would do without a thought in your 
own home for your own family seems menial when it 
is demanded by a stranger. 

3. The very words, ^^ service " and " servant," are 
hateful. It is all well enough to talk about service 
being divine, but that is not the way the world looks 
at it. 

4. Say that a young woman well brought up 
undertakes to do chamber- work ; she is obliged to 
associate with the other girls, no matter how uncon- 
genial they may be, what may be their language or 
personal habits or table manners. If she tries to keep 
to herself, the rest think she is taking airs, and combine 
to make her life unbearable. 

5. Or say she takes a place for general housework j 
to be alone in the midst of others is crushing, 

16 



242 Womefi Wage'Earriers. 

— quite different from being alone in one's own 
lodgings. 

6. I suppose a soldier does n't mind being ordered 
around by his captain ; but in a family the mistress 
and maid are so mixed up that it is much harder to 
keep the lines from tanghng. It takes a very superior 
person, on both sides, to do it. 

7. I knew an educated woman — a lady — who 
tried it as a sort of upper housemaid. The work was 
easy, the pay good, and she never had a harsh word ; 
but they just seemed unconscious of her existence. 
She said the gentlemen of the house, father and son, 
would come in and stand before her to have her take 
their umbrellas or help them off with their coats, and 
sometimes without speaking to her or even looking at 
her. There was something so humiliating about it 
that she couldn't stand it, but went back to slop-shop 
sewing. 

8. Many mistresses have no standard of the 
amount of work a girl ought to do. They know 
nothing about housework themselves. If a girl is 
deliberate and saves herself, they call her slow; if 
she is ambitious, and gets her work done early, and 
they see her sitting down in working-hours, they con- 
clude that she is not earning her wages, and hunt up 
some extra job for her. No matter if you can't find 
anything undone, if she is found sitting about she 
must be lazy. 

9. Some employers think that after the more 



Evils and Abuses. 243 

violent work is done, it is only a rest for the girl to 
look after the child awhile. They don't seem to real- 
ize that if the mother finds it such a reUef to get rid 
of her own child for an hour or so, it is likely to be still 
less interesting to take care of somebody else's child. 

10. Many people think the position of a child's 
nurse is very light work indeed, — mostly just sit- 
ting around ; so they don't hesitate to give her the 
care of one or two children all day, not even arrang- 
ing for her to get her meals without the oversight of 
them j and then most likely put the baby to sleep 
with her at night. Any one minute of such a day 
may not be heavy, but to have it for twenty-four 
hours is enough to wear out the strongest human 
being ever made. 

11. I knew a school-teacher who thought more 
active occupation would better suit her health ; she 
took a place as child's nurse. She loved children, 
and found no objection to the work ; but soon the 
employer concluded to put her in a bonne's cap and 
apron. My friend would have worn and liked a 
nurse's uniform, but she objected to a family livery. 
On this question they parted ; and her employer hired 
an uncouth, ignorant woman to be her child's com- 
panion and to give it its first impressions. 

12. In most houses, however elegant, the girls have 
no home privacy ; they must sleep, not only in the 
same room, but most frequently in the same bed ; it 
is rarely thought necessary to make that room pleasant 



244 Women Wage-Earners. 

or even warm for them to dress by or to sit in to do 
their own sewing. The httle tastes and notions of 
each member of the family, down to the youngest, are 
provided for; but a ^^ girl" is not supposed to have 
any. She is just a ^^girl," as a gridiron is a gridiron, 
an article bought for the convenience of the family. 
If she suits, use her till she is worn out and then 
throw her away. 

13. To go into house service, even from the most 
wretched slop or factory work, is to lose caste in our 
own world ; it may be a very narrow world, but it is 
all to us. A saleswoman or cashier or teacher is 
ashamed to associate with servants. 

14. The very words, " No followers," would keep 
us out of such occupation. No self-respecting young 
woman is going to put herself in a position where she 
is not allowed to entertain her friends, both male and 
female ; nor where, if allowed, the only place thought 
fit for them is the kitchen. 

Now, the above is not theory, but testimony, taken 
by the present writer from the lips of intelligent work- 
ing-girls, many of whom would be better oif at house- 
work than at their present occupations, except for the 
objections. And from a consideration thereof results 
this query : Given a certain number of young women 
of a class superior to the imported, willing to take 
service under the following conditions, how many 
housekeepers would agree to the conditions ? — 

I. The heaviest work, as washing, carrying coal, 



Evils and Abuses, 245 

scrubbing pavements, and the like, to be provided for, 
if this be asked, with consequent deduction in wages. 

2. In famiUes, where practicable, certain hours of 
absolute freedom while in the house, especially with 
the child's nurse. 

3. Such a way of speaking, both to and of your 
house help, as testifies to the world that you really 
do consider housework as respectable as other 
occupations. 

4. A well- warmed, well -furnished room, with sep- 
arate beds when desired ; and the use of a decent 
place and appointments at meals. 

5 . The privilege of seeing friends, whether male or 
female ; of a better part of the house than the kitchen 
in which to receive them ; and security from espio- 
nage during their visits, — this accompanied by proper 
restrictions as to evening hours, and under the con- 
dition that the work is not neglected. 

6. No livery, if objected to. 

Turning from this informal examination of 
the subject to the few labor reports which have 
taken up the matter, it becomes plain that 
domestic service is in many points more un- 
desirable than any other occupation open to 
women. The Labor Commissioner of Minne- 
sota reports, while stating all the advantages 
of the domestic servant over the general worker, 
that "only a fifth of those who employ them 



246 Women Wage- Earners. 

are fit to deal with any worker, injustice and 
oppression characterizing their methods." Fig- 
ures and detailed statements bear him out in 
this conclusion. The Colorado Commissioner 
gives even more details, and comes to the same 
conclusion; and though other reports do not 
take up the subject in detail, their indications 
are the same. 

The first general and rational presentation 
of the subject in all its bearings, both for 
employed and employer, has lately been made 
during the Woman's Congress at Chicago, 
May, 1893, in which the Domestic Science 
section discussed every phase of wrongs and 
remedies.^ The latter sum up in the forma- 
tion of bureaus of employment in every large 

1 The association then formed, and from which much is 
hoped, made the following, summary of its objects : — 

" The objects of this Association shall be : i. To awaken the public 
mind to the importance of establishing a Bureau of Information where 
there can be an exchange of wants and needs between employer and 
employed in every department of home and social life. 2. To pro- 
mote among members of the Association a more scientific knowledge 
of the economic value of various foods and fuels ; a more intelli- 
gent understanding of correct plumbing and drainage in our homes, as 
well as need for pure water and good light in a sanitarily built house. 
3. To secure skilled labor in every department of women's work in 
our homes, — not only to demand better trained cooks and waitresses, 
but to consider the importance of meeting the increasing demand for 
those competent to do plain sewmg and mending." 



Evils and Abuses. 247 

city, fixed rates, and full preparatory training. 
A keen observer of social facts has stated : The 
intelligence offices of New York alone receive 
from servants yearly over three million dollars, 
and are notoriously inefficient. This, or even 
half of it, would provide a great centre with 
training-schools, lodgings for all who needed 
them, and a system by which fixed rates were 
made according to the grade of efficiency of 
the worker. Till household service comes 
under the laws determining value, as well as 
hours and all other points involved in the wage 
for a working-day, it will remain in the disor- 
ganized and hopeless state which at present 
baffles the housekeeper, and deters self-respect- 
ing women and girls from undertaking it. To 
bring about some such organization as that sug- 
gested will most quickly accomplish this; and 
there seems already hope that the time is not 
distant when every city will have its agency 
corresponding to the great Bourse du Travail in 
Paris, but even more comprehensive in scope. 
Co-operation within certain limited degrees, 
so that private home life will not be infringed 
upon, must necessarily make part of such a 
scheme, and has already been tried with sue- 



248 Women Wage-Earners. 

cess at various points in the West; but details 
can hardly be given here. It is sufficient to 
add that with such new basis for this form of 
occupation the "servant question" will cease 
to be a terror, and the most natural occupation 
for women will have countless recruits from 
ranks now closed against it. 



Remedies and Suggestions. 249 
XII. 

REMEDIES AND SUGGESTIONS. 

THE student of social problems who faces 
the misery of the lowest order of worker, 
and the sharp privation endured by many even 
of the better class, is apt, in the first fever of 
amazement and indignation, to feel that some 
instant force must be brought to bear^ and juS' 
tice secured, though the heavens fall. It is 
this sense of the struggle of humanity out of 
which have been born Utopias of every order, 
from the ^* Republic" of Plato to the dream in 
"Looking Backward." Not one of these can 
be spared ; and that they exist and find a fol- 
lowing larger and larger, is the surest evidence 
of the soul at the bottom of each. But for 
those who take the question as a whole, who 
see how slow has been the process of evolution, 
and how impossible it is to hasten one step of 
the unfolding that humankind is still to know, 
it is the ethical side that comes uppermost, 
and that first demands consideration. 



250 Women Wage-Earners. 

Taking the mass of the lowest order of 
workers at all points, the first aim of any effort 
intended for their benefit is to disentangle the 
individual from the mass. It is not charity 
that is to do this. " Homes '' of every variety 
open their doors; but in all of them still lurks 
the suspicion of charity; and even when this 
has no active formulation in the worker's mind, 
there is still the underlying sense of the essen- 
tial injustice of withholding with one hand just 
pay, and with the other proffering a substitute, 
in a charity which is to reflect credit on the 
giver and demand gratitude from the receiver. 
Here and there this is recognized, and within 
a short time has been emphasized by a woman 
whose name is associated with the work of 
organized charities throughout the country, — 
Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. It is doubtful 
if there is any woman in the country better 
fitted, by long experience and almost matchless 
common-sense, to speak authoritatively. She 
writes : — 

" So far from assuming that the well-to-do portion of 
society have discharged all their obligations to men 
and God by supporting charitable institutions, I regard 
just this expenditure as one of the prime causes of 



Remedies and Suggestions. 251 

the suffering and crime that exist in our midst. . . . 
I am inclined, in general, to look upon what is called 
charity as the insult added to the injury done to the 
mass of the people, by insufficient payment for work." 

Just pay, then, heads the list of remedies. 
The difficulty of fixing this is necessarily enor- 
mous, nor can it come at once; since educa- 
tion for not only the employer but the public 
as a whole is demanded. To bring this about 
is a slow process. It is a transition period in 
which we live. Material conditions born of 
phenomenal material progress have deadened 
the sense as to what constitutes real progress ; 
and the working-woman of to-day contends not 
only with visible but invisible obstacles, the 
nature of which we are but just beginning to 
discern. Twenty years ago M. Paul Leroy- 
Beaulieu wrote of women wage-earners: — 

" From the economic point of view, woman, who 
has next to no material force, and whose arms are 
advantageously replaced by the least machine, can 
have useful place and obtain a fair remuneration only 
by the development of the best qualities of her intelli- 
gence. It is the inexorable law of our civilization, — 
the principle and formula even of social progress, — 
that mechanical engines are to perform every opera- 



252 Women Wage-Earners. 

tion of human labor which does not proceed directly 
from the mind. The hand of man is each day 
deprived of a portion of its original task ; but this 
general gain is a loss for the particular, and for the 
classes whose only instrument of labor is a pair of 
feeble arms/' 

Take the fact here stated, and add to it all 
that is implied in modern competitive condi- 
tions, and we see the true nature of the task 
that awaits us. To do away with this competi- 
tion would not accomplish the end desired. 
To guide it and bring it into intelligent lines 
is part of the general education. Profit-sharing 
is an indispensable portion of the justice to 
be done; and this, too, implies education for 
both sides, and would go far toward lessening 
burdens. We cannot abolish the factory, but 
hours can be shortened; the labor of married 
women with young children forbidden, as well 
as that of children below a fixed age. In- 
dustrial education will prevent the possibility 
of another generation owning so many incom- 
petent and untrained workers, and technical 
schools in general are already raising the stand- 
ard and helping to secure the same end. 

Our present methods mean waste in every 



Remedies and Suggestions. 253 

direction, and trusts and syndicates have already 
demonstrated how much may be saved to the 
producer if intelligent combination can be 
brought about. Competition can never wholly 
be set aside, since within reasonable limits it 
is the spur of invention and a part of evolution 
itself. But if wise co-operation be once adopted, 
the enormous friction and waste of present 
methods ceases, — the waste of human life as 
well as of material. 

One cheering token of progress is the in- 
creased discussion as to methods of training 
and the necessity of organization among women 
themselves. Ten years ago only a voice here 
and there suggested the need of either. In 
1885, at the meeting of the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science, Miss Sarah 
Harland, lecturer on Mathematics at Newnham 
College, insisted that educated gentlewomen 
must have larger opportunity for paying work. 
The three qualifications in all work she stated 
to be: (i) Organization on a large scale; (2) 
Permanency; (3) Giving returns that will ena- 
ble the salaries paid to compete with those of 
teachers. 

She regarded dressmaking as the trade which 



254 Women Wage-Earners. 

could most readily organize and meet the other 
conditions specified, and millinery as the trade 
which would come next. Until such organiza- 
tion and its results have gradually altered pres- 
ent conditions, it will be true for all workers, 
on both sides of the sea, that not health alone 
but life itself are continuously endangered by 
the facts hedging about all labor. Dr. Stevens, 
the head of St. Luke's Insane Asylum in Lon- 
don, in a paper read before the Social Science 
Association, said : — 

" It may be stated with great confidence that a 
prolific cause for the rapid and extensive increase of 
insanity in this country is to be found in the unceas- 
ing toil and anxiety to which the working- classes are 
subjected, this cause developing the disease in the 
existing generation, or, what is quite as frequently the 
case, transmitting to the offspring idiocy, insanity, or 
some imperfectly developed sensorium or nervous 
system. The agitated, overworked, and harassed 
parent is not in a condition to transmit a healthy 
brain to his child.'' i 

Accepted as true in 1857, the words are not 
less so to-day, when cheap labor swarms, and 
the unemployed number their millions. 

1 Transactions of the National Association for the Promo- 
tion of Social Science, 1857, p. 554. 



Remedies and Suggestions, 255 

How best to combine and to what ends, is 
the lesson taught in every form of the new 
movement for organization among women. To 
learn how to work together and what power 
lies in combination, has been the lesson of all 
clubs. Among men it has counted as one of 
the chief educating forces, but for women 
every circumstance has fostered the distrust of 
each other which belongs to all undeveloped 
natures. For the lowest order of worker even, 
the "Working-Woman's Journal," published 
in London and the organ of the Working- 
Woman's Protective Union, has for the last 
year recorded, from month to month, the grad- 
ual progress of the idea of combination, and 
the new hope it has brought to all who have 
gone into trades unions. 

With us there has been equal need and 
equal ignorance of all that such combinations 
have to give. They mean arbitration rather 
than strikes, and the compelling of ignorant 
and unjust employers to consider the situation 
from other points of view than their own. 
They compel also the same attitude from men 
in the same trades, who often are as strong 
opponents of a better chance for their asso- 



256 Women Wage- Earners. 

ciates among women workers in the same 
branches, as the most prejudiced employer. 

Six points are^ urged by the Working- 
Woman's Society of New York, all in the lines 
indicated here. Its purposes and aims, as 
given in the prospectus, are as follows : — 

1. To encourage women in the various trades to 
protect their mutual interests by organization. 

2. To use all possible means to enforce the ex- 
isting laws relating to the protection of women and 
children in factories and shops, investigating all re- 
ported violations of such laws; also to promote, by 
all suitable means, further legislation in this direction. 

3. To work for the abolition of tenement- house 
manufacture, especially in the cigar and clothing 
trades. 

4. To investigate all reported cases of cruel treat- 
ment on the part of employers and their managers to 
their women and children employees, in withholding 
money due, in imposing fines, or in docking wages 
without sufficient reason. 

5. To found a labor bureau for the purpose of 
facilitating the exchanging of labor between city and 
country, thus relieving the over-crowded occupations 
now filled by women. 

6. To publish a journal in the interests of working- 
women. 

7. To secure equal pay for both sexes for equal 
work. 



Remedies and Suggestions. 257 

These points are the same as those made by 
the few clubs which have taken up the ques- 
tion of woman's work and wages; but thus far 
only this society has formulated them defi- 
nitely. Working-girls' clubs, friendly socie- 
ties, and guilds are giving to the worker new 
thoughts and new purposes. The Convention 
of Working-Girls' Clubs held in New York in 
April, 1890, showed the wide-reaching influ- 
ence they had attained, and the new ideals 
opening before the worker. It showed also 
with equal force the roused sense of responsi- 
bility toward them, and the eager interest and 
desire for their betterment in all ways. Where 
they themselves touched upon their needs, 
there were direct statements in the same line 
as many already quoted, which called for better 
pay, better conditions, shorter hours, and fewer 
fines. 

Following the points given above came an- 
other presentation, the result of still further 
and long-continued investigation; and as the 
methods of the search and its results are prac- 
ticable for all towns and cities where women 
are at work, the statement prepared for the 
Society is given in full : — 

17 



258 Women Wage- Earners. 

'' We would call your attention to the condition of 
the women and children in the large retail houses in 
this city, — conditions which tend to injure both 
physically and morally, not only these women and 
children, but working-women in general. The general 
idea is that saleswomen are employed from eight 
A. M. to six p. M., but they are really engaged in the 
majority of stores for such a time as the firm requires 
them ; which means in the Grand Street stores, until 
ten, eleven, and twelve o'clock on Saturday night all 
the year round, the Saturday half-holiday not being 
observed in summer ; and in the majority of houses 
that stock must be arranged after six p. m., the time 
varying, according to season, from fifteen minutes to 
five hours, and this without supper or extra pay ; thus 
compelling women and children to go long distances 
late at night, and rendering them hable to insult and 
immoral influences. 

" Excessive fines are imposed in many stores, — fines 
varying from ten to thirty cents for ten minutes' tardi- 
ness in the morning or lunch hour, and for all mistakes. 
Cases are known of girls who have been fined a full 
week's pay at the end of the week. In one store the 
fines amounted to $3,000 in a year, and the sum was 
divided between the superintendent and timekeeper ; 
and the superintendent was heard to charge the time- 
keeper with not being strict enough in his duties. 

" Bad sanitary conditions, bad ventilation and toilet 
arrangements are common, and the sanitary laws are 



Remedies and Suggestions. 259 

not observed. Children under age are employed at 
work far beyond their strength, often far into the 
night. The average wages do not exceed ^4.50 ; and 
in one of our largest stores the average wage is 1 2. 40, 
in another ^2.90. The tendency in all stores is to 
secure the cheapest help ; for this reason school-girls 
just graduated are much sought for, as they, having 
homes, can afford to work for less. But a large pro- 
portion of the saleswomen either pay board or help 
support a family; and how can this be done on ^4.50 
per week ? The cheapest board in dark stuify attics 
or tenement houses is ^3.00, fuel and washing extra; 
and no woman can pay doctor's bills and maintain a 
respectable appearance on what remains. How then 
does she live ? There are two ways of answering : 
The story of a woman who worked in one of our large 
houses is one way. This woman earned ^3.00 per 
week ; she paid $1.50 for her room ; her breakfast con- 
sisted of a cup of coffee ; she had no lunch ; she had 
but one meal a day. Many saleswomen must be in 
this condition. The other answer is that given by 
more than one employer, who when saleswomen com- 
plain of the low wages offered, reply : ^ Oh, well, get 
yourself a gentleman friend ; most of our girls have 
them' Not long since a member of our society re- 
ceived a letter from a salesman in a certain house 
which read thus : ^ In the name of God cannot some- 
thing be done for the saleswomen ? I am a salesman 
in , and I have walked in disguise at night upon 



26o Women Wage- Earners. 

certain streets to be accosted by girls in my own 
department, — girls whose salaries are so low it was 
impossible to live upon them." A painter told us that 
in working in the houses of ill-repute in the vicinity 
of Twenty-third Street, he was astonished at the num- 
ber of women whom he recognized as saleswomen in 
different stores who frequented these houses. But 
what are they to do ? They are women without trade 
or profession, thrown upon their own resources, obliged 
to make a good appearance, and unable to do so and 
yet have sufficient food. We must all concede that 
virtue and honor in woman are natural, and very few 
women resort to such ways unless forced to do so ; 
certainly not, when they yet have sufficient pride to 
wish to maintain the appearance of respectability. If 
men's wages fall below a certain limit, they become 
tramps, thieves, and robbers ; but woman's wages have 
no limits since she can always work for less than she 
can subsist upon, the paths of shame being open to 
her. And the beggarly pittance for which one class 
of women work becomes the standard of wages for 
all women, and throws them out upon the world, there 
to find a sure market. But we do not wish to in- 
sinuate, in stating these facts, that the majority of 
saleswomen resort to evil ways ; on the contrary, they 
are the exception who do so. We know the majority 
of women prefer to suffer, and do suffer, rather than 
do so. But can we allow a few to fall? We of the 
Working -Women's Society believe that we are so far 



Remedies and Suggestions. 261 

our sisters' keepers that we are responsible for their 
position. 

"We believe that the payment and condition of 
those who work (through their employers) for us is 
our affair, and we have no right to remain in an igno- 
rance that involves or may involve their misery. We 
believe we have no right, having obtained such knowl- 
edge, to refrain from seeking to remedy it, and urging 
all to assist us to do so. 

" In this belief we call your attention to the pro- 
posed ^ Consumers* League,' the members of which 
shall pledge themselves to deal at those stores where 
just conditions exist. 

"We have gotten together a number of facts which 
we shall be glad to present to you with our estimate 
of a fair house, or one which under existing conditions 
is eligible to admission to a white list." 

Preceding this appeal and the public meet- 
ings which ensued, came, in 1890, the formation 
of the Consumers' League, Mrs. Josephine 
Shaw Lov/ell its President. Quiet and incon- 
spicuous as its work has been, the best retail 
mercantile houses in New York have accepted 
its prospectus as just, and stand now upon 
the ''White List,'' which numbers all mer- 
chants who seek to deal justly and fairly with 
their employees. "What constitutes a Fair 



262 Women Wage-Earners. 

House '' expresses all the needs and formu- 
lates the most vital demands of the working- 
woman ; and the results already accomplished 
speak for themselves. As a guide to other 
workers, it is given here in full : — 

STANDARD OF A FAIR HOUSE. 
Wages. 

A fair house is one in which equal pay is given for 
work of equal value, irrespective of sex. In the de- 
partments where women only are employed, in which 
the minimum wages are six dollars per week for 
experienced adult workers, and fall in few instances 
below eight dollars. 

In which wages are paid by the week. 

In which fines, if imposed, are paid into a fund for 
the benefit of the employees. 

In which the minimum wages of cash-girls are two 
dollars per week, with the same conditions regarding 
weekly payments and fines. 

Hours. 

A fair house is one in which the hours from eight 
A. M. to six p. M. (with three quarters of an hour for 
lunch) constitute the working-day, and a general half- 
holiday is given on one day of each week during at 
least two summer months. 



Remedies and Suggestions. 263 

In which a vacation of not less than one week is 
given with pay during the summer season. 
In which all over-time is compensated for. 

Physical Conditions. 

A fair house is one in which work, lunch, and re- 
tiring rooms are apart^from each other, and conform 
in all respects to the present sanitary laws. 

In which the present law regarding the providing 
of seats for saleswomen is observed, and the use of 
seats permitted. 

Other Conditions. 
A fair house is one in which humane and consider- 
ate behavior toward employees is the rule. 

In which fidelity and length of service meet with 
the consideration which is their due. 

In which no children under fourteen years of age 
are employed. 

Membership. 

The condition of membership shall be the approval 
by signature of the object of the Consumers' League ; 
and all persons shall be eligible for membership ex- 
cepting such as are engaged in the retail business in 
this city, either as employer or employee. 

The members shall not be bound never to buy at 
other shops. 

The names of the members of the Consumers' 
League shall not be made public. 



264 Women Wage-Earners. 

Later, one of the ablest workers in this field, 
Mrs. Florence Kelley, formulated a basis for 
every society of working-women, as follows : 

I. To bring out of the chaos of competition the 

order of co-operation. 
II. To organize all wages-earning women. 

III. To disseminate the Hterature of labor and co- 

operation. 

IV. To institute a label which shall enable the pur- 

chaser to discriminate in favor of goods 
produced under healthful conditions. 
V. I . Abolition of child labor to the age of sixteen. 

2. Compulsory education to the age of sixteen. 

3. Prohibition of employment of minors more 

than eight hours daily. 

4. Prohibition of employment of minors at dan- 

gerous occupations. 

5. Appointment of women inspectors, one for 

every thousand women and children em- 
ployed. 

6. Healthful conditions of work for women and 

children. 

The foregoing to be obtained by legislation. 
The following to be obtained by organization : — 

1. Equal pay for equal work with men. 

2. A minimal rate which will enable the least 

paid to live upon her earnings. 



Remedies mid Suggestions. 265 

A little later, the statement which follows, 
became necessary : — 

" Certain abuses exist in the dry-goods houses affect- 
ing the well-being of the saleswomen and children 
employed, which we believe can be remedied. In 
fact, in different stores some of them have been reme- 
died, which gives us courage to bring these matters to 
your attention. 

" We find the hours are often excessive, and that 
these women and children are not paid for over-time. 

^' We find that in many houses the saleswomen work 
under unwholesome conditions ; these comprise bad 
ventilation, unsanitary toilet arrangements, and an in- 
difference to considerations of decency. 

" The wages, which are low, we find are often re- 
duced by excessive fines ; that employers place a 
value on time lost that they fail to give for service 
rendered. 

" We find that numbers of children under age are 
employed for excessive hours, and at work far beyond 
their strength. 

" We find that long and faithful service does not 
meet with the consideration that is its due ; on the 
contrary, having served a certain number of years is a 
reason for dimissal. 

" Because of the foregoing low wages, the discour- 
aging result of excessive fines, long hours, and un- 
wholesome sanitary conditions, not only the physical 



266 Women Wage-Earners. 

system is injured, but — the result we most deplore, and 
of which we have incontrovertible proof — the ten- 
dency is to injure the moral well-being, 

^' We believe that to call attention to these evils is * 
to go far toward remedying them, and that the power 
to do this lies largely in the hands of the purchasing 
classes. 

" We think that ^ the payment and condition of 
those who work — through their employers — for us, 
is our affair, and that we have no right to remain in 
ignorance of the conditions that involve or may in- 
volve their misery.' " 

Two points still remain untouched, both of 
them vital elements in the just working of the 
social scheme, — profit-sharing, and a board of 
conciliation and arbitration for the adjust- 
ment of all difficulties between employer and 
employed. 

For every detail bearing upon the education 
bound up in even the attempt at profit-sharing, 
as well as for the actual and successful results 
in this direction, the reader is referred to an 
excellent little monograph on the subject, 
"Sharing the Profits,'' by Miss Mary Whiton 
Calkins, A.M., and for very full and elaborate 
treatment of the question, to the invaluable 
volume by N. P. Oilman, "Profit-Sharing be- 



Remedies and Suggestions, 267 

tween Employer and Employed/' In all cases 
where the experiment has had fair trial, it has 
resulted in a marked increase of interest in the 
work itself; an actual lessening of the cost of 
production, and of general wear and tear, be- 
cause of this increased interest; and afar more 
friendly feeling between employer and em- 
ployed. It is certain that justice requires 
immediate attention to every phase of this 
question, and that its adoption is the first step 
in the right direction. 

For the second point, we have as yet in 
this country only an occasional attempt at 
arbitration, yet its need becomes more and 
more apparent with every fresh difficulty in 
the field of labor. A little volume by Mrs. 
Josephine Shaw Lowell, at the time of writ- 
ing,^ going through the press, who has given 
much time to a study of the question, contains 
the latest results of English and French legis- 
lation, and of special action in this direction. 
Any history of the movement as a whole, 
hardly has place in these pages. It is suffi- 
cient to say that the system had practically no 
consideration till 1850, when the first Board of 

1 July, 1893. 



268 Women Wage-Earners. 

Arbitration was formed in England, owing its 
existence to the determined efforts of two men. 
Mr. Rupert Kettle, lawyer and judge, ap- 
proached it from the legal side; Mr. Murdella, 
a manufacturer, and himself sprung from the 
working-classes, went straight '' to the practical 
and moral end implied by the word ' concilia- 
tion,' . . ., both routes of this noble emulation 
converging, each affording strength to the 
common conclusions." 

The Nottingham lace manufacture, in which 
numbers of women and children as well as 
men are employed, has, for thirty years and 
more, been governed by a Board of Arbitra- 
tion, the result being an end of strikes and 
all difficulties of like nature. If no more were 
accomplished than the bringing about a better 
understanding between employer and employed, 
it would mean much, since mutual suspicion 
and distrust rule for both. Organization among 
women, and the sense of mutual dependence 
given by it, lead naturally to the formation of a 
board able to judge dispassionately and disinter- 
estedly of the questions naturally arising, many 
of which, however, are at once dissipated on the 
adoption of the system of profit-sharing. 



Remedies and Suggestions, 269 

The practical steps already taken sum up in 
the forms just given; and there remains only 
the question constantly asked as to the final 
effect upon wages of woman's entrance into 
public life, this question usually shaping itself 
under three heads : — 

1. Why are they in the field? 

2. How does their work compare in efficiency 
with that of men ? 

3. What is likely to be the final effect on 
wage of their entrance into active life? 

The first phase has already had full answer 
in the general survey of trades and their rise 
and growth. As to the second, personal obser- 
vation, long continued and minute, added to 
the very full knowledge to be obtained from 
the reports of the various State bureaus of 
labor, goes to prove beyond question that, 
given the same grade of intelligence, the work 
of women is fully equal to that of men. De- 
scending in the scale to untrained labor in all 
its forms, the woman is at times of less value 
than the man. The Knights of Labor, how- 
ever, settled definitely that this was seldom 
the case, and in their constitution demanded 
equal pay for equal work. For both sexes 



270 Women Wage- Earners, 

machinery is more and more superseding the 
labor of each ; and as women and children are 
quite capable of running much of it, this fact, 
of course, brings the general wage to their 
standard. This, added to various physiological 
and social reasons, makes woman often a less 
dependable worker than man, and tends to keep 
wages at a minimum. 

As to the final effect on wages, I regard the 
whole aspect of things as purely transitional, 
and must answer from personal conviction in 
the matter. 

The entire movement appears to me a part 
of the natural evolution from barbaric law and 
restriction, and a necessary demonstration of 
the spiritual equality of the sexes. I regard it 
also as the nurse and developer of many small 
virtues in which women are especially deficient, 
— punctuality, unvarying quality of work, a 
sense of business honor and of personal fidel- 
ity, each to all and all to each. But I cannot 
feel that it is a permanent state, or that when 
the essential has been accomplished women 
will have the same need or the same desire 
that now rules. I believe that wages must 
necessarily fluctuate and tend to the mere point 



Remedies and Suggestions. 271 

of subsistence when either child labor or the 
lowest grade of woman's labor exists, and that 
the only way out of the complications we face 
is in an alteration of ideals. Statistics and 
general reports show the demoralization of 
family life where such work goes on, and the 
fact that in the long run the workman loses 
rather than gains where his family share his 
labor. 

The lowering of wage may be considered, 
then, as in one sense remedial, and the present 
state of things as in part the mere action of 
inevitable and inescapable law. But it is im- 
possible to make this plain in present limits. 
Having passed through every stage of feeling, 
— sick pity, burning indignation,- and tempest- 
uous desire for instant action, — I have come 
at last to regard all as our education in justice 
and a demand for training in such wise as shall 
render unskilled labor more and more impos- 
sible. So long as it exists, however, I see no 
outlook but the fluctuating and uncertain wage, 
the natural result of the existence of the low- 
est order of workers. 

For them as for us it is the development of 
the individual from the mass that is the chief 



272 Women Wage- Earners, 

end of any real civilization. No Utopias of 
any past or present can bring this at once. 

*^ Each man to himself and each woman to herself, 
such is the word of the past and the present, and the 
true word of immortahty.'^ 

" No one can acquire for another, not one ; 
No one can grow for another, not one." 

Despair might easily be the outcome of a 
first glance at these conditions ; but the stir at 
all points is assurance of a better day to come. 

Legislation can do much. The appointment 
of women inspectors, lately brought about for 
New York, is imperative at all points, since 
women will tell women the evils they would 
never mention to men. Law can also demand 
decent sanitary conditions, and affix a penalty 
for every violation. Beyond this, and the 
awakening of the public conscience as to what 
is owed the honest worker, little can be said. 
Enlightenment, a better chance at every point 
for the struggling mass, — that is the work for 
each and all of them, and for those who would 
aid the constant demand, and labor for justice 
in its largest sense and its most rigorous 
application. With justice on both sides, abuses 
die of pure inanition. The tenement-house 



Remedies and Suggestions. 273 

system, every evil that hedges about special 
trades, every wrong born of cupidity and igno- 
rance, and all base features of trade at its 
worst, end once for all, and we see the end 
and aim of the social life, whether for em- 
ployer or employed. 

A generation ago Mazzini wrote : — 

" The human soul, not the body, should be the 
starting-point of all our efforts, since the body without 
the soul is only a carcass, whilst the soul, wherever it 
is found free and holy, is sure to mould for itself such 
a body as its wants and vocation require/* 

It is this soul-moulding that is given chiefly 
into the hands of women. It is through them 
that the higher ideal of life, its purpose and 
its demands, is to be made known. No pres- 
ent scheme of general philanthropy can touch 
this need. It is growth in the human soul 
itself that will mean justice from the em- 
ployer to each and every worker, and from the 
worker in equal measure to the employer; and 
this justice can be implanted in the child as 
certainly as many another virtue, into the 
knowledge and love of which we grow but 

slowly. 

18 



2 74 Women Wage- Earners. 

Never has deeper interest followed every 
movement for the understanding and bettering 
of conditions. Never was there stronger ground 
for hope that, in spite of the worst abuses ex- 
isting, man's will is to join hands at last with 
natural evolution toward higher forms. Faith 
and hope alike find their assurance in the in- 
creasing sense of the solidarity of human kind, 
and the spirit of brotherhood more and more 
discernible, which, as it grows, must end all 
oppression, conscious and unconscious. The 
old days of darkness are dying. Man knows 
at last that — 

" Laying hands on another, 
To coin his labor and sweat, 
He goes in pawn to his victim 
For eternal years in debt ; " 

and in knowing it, the first step is taken in 
the new life wherein all are brothers; and the 
law of love, slowly as it may work, ends for- 
ever the long conflict between^ employer and 
employed. 



APPENDIX. 



FACTORY INSPECTION LAW. 

Passed May i8, 1886; Amended May 25, 1887; Amended June 
15, 1889; Amended May 21, 1890; Amended May 18, 1892. 



Chapter 409, Laws of 1886 (as amended by 
Chapter 673, Laws of 1892). 

An Act to Regulate the Employment of Women and Children in 
Manufacturing Establishments, and to Provide for the Appoint- 
ment of Inspectors to Enforce the Same. 



The People of the State of New York, represented in 
Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows : 
Section i. No person under eighteen years of age, 
and no woman under twenty-one years or age, em- 
ployed in any manufacturing establishment, shall be 
required, permitted, or suffered to work therein more 
than sixty hours in any one week, or more than ten 
hours in any one day, unless for the purpose of mak- 
ing a shorter work-day on the last day of the week, 
nor more hours in any one week than will make an 
average of ten hours per day for the whole number of 
days in which such person or such woman shall so 
work during such week ; and in no case shall any person 



276 Appendix. 

under eighteen years of age, or any woman under 
twenty-one years of age, work in any such establish- 
ment after nine o'clock in the evening or before six 
o'clock in the morning of any day. Every person, 
firm, corporation, or company employing any person 
under eighteen years of age, or any woman under 
twenty-one years of age, in any manufacturing estab- 
lishment, shall post and keep posted in a conspicuous 
place in every room where such help is employed, a 
printed notice stating the number of hours of labor 
per day required of such persons for each day of the 
week, and the number of hours of labor exacted or 
permitted to be performed by such persons shall not 
exceed the number of hours of labor so posted as 
being required. The time of beginning and ending 
the day's labor shall be the time stated in such notice ; 
provided that such women under twenty-one and 
persons under eighteen years of age may begin after 
the time set for beginning, and stop before the time 
set in such notice for the stopping of the day's labor ; 
but they shall not be permitted or required to perform 
any labor before the time stated on the notices as the 
time for beginning the day's labor, nor after the time 
stated upon the notices as the hour for ending the 
day's labor. The terms of the notice stating the hours 
of labor required shall not be changed after the begin- 
ning of labor on the first day of the week without the 
consent of the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory 
Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector. When, in 



Appendix. 277 

order to make a shorter work-day on the last day of 
the week, women under twenty-one and youths under 
eighteen years of age are to be required, permitted, or 
suffered to work more than ten hours in any one day, 
in a manufacturing establishment, it shall be the duty 
of the proprietor, agent, foreman, superintendent, or 
other person employing such persons, to notify the 
Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory^ Inspector, or a 
Deputy Factory Inspector, in charge of the district, 
in writing, of such intention, stating the number of 
hours of labor per day which it is proposed to permit 
or require, and the date upon which the necessity for 
such lengthened day's labor shall cease, and also again 
forward such notification when it shall actually have 
ceased. A record of the amount of over-time so 
worked, and of the days upon which it was performed, 
with the names of the employees who were thus re- 
quired or permitted to work more than ten hours in 
any one day, shall be kept in the office of the manu- 
facturing establishment, and produced upon the 
demand of any officer appointed to enforce the 
provisions of this act. 

§ 2. No child under fourteen years of age shall be 
employed in any manufacturing establishment within 
this State. It shall be the duty of every person 
employing children to keep a register, in which shall 
be recorded the name, birthplace, age and place of 
residence of every person employed by him under the 
age of sixteen years ; and it shall be unlawful for any 



278 Appendix. 

proprietor, agent, foreman, or other person in or con- 
nected with a manufacturing estabUshment to hire or 
employ any child under the age of sixteen years to 
work therein without there is first provided and placed 
on file in the office an affidavit made by the parent or 
guardian, stating the age, date, and place of birth of 
said child ; if said child have no parent or guardian, 
then such affidavit shall be made by the child, which 
affidavit shall be kept on file by the employer, and 
which said register and affidavit shall be produced for 
inspection on demand made by the Inspector, Assist- 
ant Inspector, or any of the deputies appointed under 
this act. There shall be posted conspicuously in every 
room where children under sixteen years of age are 
employed, a list of their names with their ages respec- 
tively. No child under the age of sixteen years shall 
be employed in any manufacturing establishment who 
cannot read and write simple sentences in the Enghsh 
language, except during the vacation of the public 
schools in the city or town where such minor lives. 
The Factory Inspector, Assistant Inspector, and Deputy 
Inspectors shall have power to demand a certificate of 
physical fitness from some regular physician, in the 
case of children who may seem physically unable to 
perform the labor at which they may be employed, 
and shall have power to prohibit the employment of 
any minor that cannot obtain such a certificate. 

§ 3. No person, firm, or corporation shall employ 
or permit any child under the age of fifteen years to 



Appendix. 279 

have the care, custody, management of, or to operate 
any elevator, or shall employ or permit any person 
under the age of eighteen years to have the care, cus- 
tody, management, or operation of any elevator run- 
ning at a speed of over two hundred feet a minute. 

§ 4. It shall be the duty of the owner, agent, or 
lessee of any manufacturing establishment where there 
is any elevator, hoisting- shaft, or well-hole, to cause 
the same to be properly and substantially inclosed or 
secured, if in the opinion of the Factory Inspector, or 
of the Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy Fac- 
tory Inspector, unless disapproved by the Factory 
Inspector, it is necessary to protect the lives or Hmbs 
of those employed in such establishment. It shall also 
be the duty of the owner, agent, or lessee of each of 
such establishments to provide or cause to be provided, 
if, in the opinion of the Inspector, the safety of persons 
in or about the premises should require it, such proper 
trap or automatic doors, so fastened in or at all eleva- 
tor ways as to form a substantial surface when closed, 
and so constructed as to open and close by action of 
the elevator in its passage, either ascending or de- 
scending, but the requirements of this section shall 
not apply to passenger elevators that are closed on 
all sides. The Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory 
Inspector, and Deputy Factory Inspectors may inspect 
the cables, gearing, or other apparatus of elevators in 
manufacturing establishments, and require that the 
same be kept in a safe condition. 



2 8o Appendix. 

§ 5. Proper and substantial hand-rails shall be pro- 
vided on all stairways in manufacturing establishments, 
and where, in the opinion of the Factory Inspector, or 
of the Assistant Factory Inspector, or Deputy Factory 
Inspector, unless disapproved by the Factory Inspector, 
it is necessary, the steps of said stairs in all such es- 
tablishments shall be substantially covered with rubber, 
securely fastened thereon, for the better safety of per- 
sons employed in said establishments. The stairs shall 
be properly screened at the sides and bottom, and all 
doors leading in or to such factory shall be so con- 
structed as to open outwardly where practicable, and 
shall be neither locked, bolted, nor fastened during 
working-hours. 

§ 6. If, in the opinion of the Factory Inspector, or 
of the Assistant Factory Inspector, or of a Deputy 
Factory Inspector, it is necessary to insure the safety 
of the persons employed in any manufacturing estab- 
lishment, three or more stories in height, one or more 
fire-escapes, as may be deemed by the Factory In- 
spector as necessary and sufficient therefor, shall be 
provided on the outside of such establishment, con- 
necting with each floor above the first, well fastened 
and secured and of sufficient strength, each of which 
fire-escapes shall have landings or balconies, not less 
than six feet in length and three feet in width, guarded 
by iron railings not less than three feet in height, and 
embracing at least two windows at each story and con- 
necting with the interior by easily accessible and un- 



Appendix. 281 

obstructed openings, and the balconies or landings 
shall be connected by iron stairs, not less than 
eighteen inches wide, the steps not to be less than 
six inches tread, placed at a proper slant, and pro- 
tected by a well-secured hand-rail on both sides with 
a twelve-inch-wide drop-ladder from the lower plat- 
form reaching to the ground. Any other plan or 
style of fire-escape shall be sufficient, if approved by 
the Factory Inspector ; but if not so approved, the 
Factory Inspector may notify the owner, proprietor, 
or lessee of such estabHshment or of the building in 
which such establishment is conducted, or the agent 
or superintendent or either of them, in writing, that 
any such other plan or style of fire-escape is not suf- 
ficient, and may, by an order in writing, served in like 
manner, require one or more fire-escapes, as he shall 
deem necessary and sufficient, to be provided for such 
establishment, at such locations and of such plan and 
style as shall be specified in such written order. 
Within twenty days after the service of such order, 
the number of fire-escapes required in such order for 
such establishment shall be provided therefor, each of 
which shall be either of the plan and style and in 
accordance with the specifications in said order 
required, or of the plan and style in this section 
above described and declared to be sufficient. The 
windows or doors to each fire-escape shall be of suf- 
ficient size, and be located as far as possible consistent 
with accessibiUty, from the stairways and elevator 



282 Appendix. 

hatchways or openings, and the ladder thereof shall 
extend to the roof. Stationary stairs or ladders shall 
be provided on the inside of such establishment from 
the upper story to the roof, as a means of escape in 
case of fire. 

§ 7. It shall be the duty of the owner, agent, 
superintendent, or other person having charge of such 
manufacturing establishment, or of any floor or part 
thereof, to report in writing to the Factory Inspector 
all accidents or injury done to any person in such 
factory, within forty- eight hours of the time of the 
accident, stating as fully as possible the extent and 
cause of such injury, and the place where the injured 
person has been sent, with such other information 
relative thereto as may be required by the Factory 
Inspector. The Factory Inspector or Assistant Fac- 
tory Inspector and Deputy Factory Inspectors under 
the supervision of the Factory Inspector, are hereby 
authorized and empowered to fully investigate the 
causes of such accidents, and to require such pre- 
cautions to be taken as will in their judgment prevent 
the recurrence of similar accidents. 

§ 8. It shall be the duty of the owner of any man- 
ufacturing establishment, or his agents, superintendent, 
or other person in charge of the same, to furnish and 
supply, or cause to be furnished and suppUed therein, 
in the discretion of the Factory Inspector, or of the 
Assistant Factory Inspector, or of a Deputy Factory 
Inspector, unless disapproved by the Factory In- 



I 



Appendix. 283 

spector, where machinery is used, belt-shifters or 
other safe mechanical contrivances; for the purpose 
of throwing on or off belts or pulleys ; and wherever 
possible machinery therein shall be provided with 
loose pulleys ; all vats, pans, saws, planers, cogs, gear- 
ing, belting, shafting, set- screws, and machinery of 
every description therein shall be properly guarded, 
and no person shall remove or make ineffective any 
safeguard around or attached to any planer, saw, belt- 
ing, shafting or other machinery, or around any vat or 
pan, while the same is in use, unless for the purpose 
of immediately making repairs thereto, and all such 
safeguards shall be promptly replaced. By attaching 
thereto a notice to that effect, the use of any ma- 
chinery may be prohibited by the Factory Inspector, 
Assistant Factory Inspector, or by a Deputy Factory 
Inspector, unless such notice is disapproved by the 
Factory Inspector, should such machinery be regarded 
as dangerous. Such notice must be signed by the 
Inspector who issues it, and shall only be removed 
after the required safeguards are provided, and the 
unsafe or dangerous machine shall not be used in the 
mean time. Exhaust fans of sufficient power shall be 
provided for the purpose of carrying off dust from 
emery wheels and grindstones, and dust-creating ma- 
chinery therein. No person under eighteen years 
of age and no woman under twenty-one years of 
age shall be allowed to clean machinery while in 
motion. 



284 Appendix. 

§ 9. A suitable and proper washroom and water- 
closets shall be provided in each manufacturing 
establishment, and such water-closets shall be prop- 
erly screened and ventilated, and be kept at all times 
in a clean condition ; and if women or girls are em- 
ployed in any such establishment, the water-closets 
used by them shall have separate approaches and 
be separate and apart from those used by men. All 
water-closets shall be kept free of obscene writing and 
marking. A dressing-room shall be provided for 
women and girls, when required by the Factory In- 
spector, in any manufacturing establishment in which 
women and girls are employed. 

§ 10. Not less than sixty minutes shall be allowed 
for the noonday meal in any manufacturing establish- 
ment in this State. The Factory Inspector, the 
Assistant Factory Inspector, or any Deputy Factory 
Inspector shall have power to issue written permits 
in special cases, allowing shorter meal-time at noon, 
and such permit must be conspicuously posted in the 
main entrance of the establishment, and such permit 
may be revoked at any time the Factory Inspector 
deems necessary, and shall only be given where good 
cause can be shown. 

§11. The walls and ceilings of each workroom in 
every manufacturing establishment shall be lime- 
washed or painted, when in the opinion of the Factory 
Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or of a Deputy 
Factory Inspector, unless disapproved of by the 



Appendix^ 285 

Factory Inspector, it shall be conducive to the health 
or cleanliness of the persons working therein. 

§ 12. Any officer of the Factory Inspection Depart- 
ment, or other competent person designated for such 
purpose by the Factory Inspector, shall inspect any 
building used as a workshop or manufacturing estab- 
lishment or anything attached thereto, located therein 
or connected therewith, outside of the cities of New- 
York and Brooklyn, which has been represented to 
be unsafe or dangerous to life or limb. If it appears 
upon such inspection that the building or anything 
attached thereto, located therein or connected there- 
with is unsafe or dangerous to life or limb, the Factory 
Inspector shall order the same to be removed or ren- 
dered safe and secure ; and if such notification be not 
complied with within a reasonable time, he shall 
prosecute whoever may be responsible for such 
delinquency. 

§ 13. No room or rooms, apartment or apartments, 
in any tenement or dwelling-house, shall be used for 
the manufacture of coats, vests, trousers, knee-pants, 
overalls, cloaks, furs, fur-trimmings, fur-garments, 
shirts, purses, feathers, artificial flowers, or cigars, 
excepting by the immediate members of the family 
living therein. No person, firm, or corporation shall 
hire or employ any person to work in any one room 
or rooms, apartment or apartments, in any tenement 
or dwelling-house, or building in the rear of a tene- 
ment or dwelling-house, at making in whole or in part 



286 Appendix, 

any coats, vests, trousers, knee-pants, fur, fur-trim- 
mings, fur-garments, shirts, purses, feathers, artificial 
flowers, or cigars, without first obtaining a written 
permit from the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory 
Inspector, or a Deputy Factory Inspector, which per- 
mit may be revoked at any time the health of the 
community or of those employed therein may require 
it, and which permit shall not be granted until an 
inspection of such premises is made by the Factory 
Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy 
Factory Inspector, and the maximum number of per- 
sons allowed to be employed therein shall be stated 
in such permit. Such permit shall be framed and 
posted in a conspicuous place in the room or in one 
of the rooms to which it relates. 

§ 14. Not less than two hundred and fifty cubic 
feet of air space shall be allowed for each person in 
any workroom where persons are employed during 
the hours between six o'clock in the morning and six 
o'clock in the evening, and not less than four hundred 
cubic feet of air space shall be provided for each per- 
son in any workroom where persons are employed 
between six o'clock in the evening and six o'clock in 
the morning. By a written permit the Factory In- 
spector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or a Deputy 
Factory Inspector, with the consent of the Factory 
Inspector, may allow persons to be employed in a 
room where there are less than four hundred cubic 
feet of air space for each person employed between 



Appendix* 287 

six o'clock in the evening and six o'clock in the 
morning, provided such room is lighted by electricity 
at all times during such hours while persons are em- 
ployed therein. There shall be sufficient means of 
ventilation provided in each workroom of every manu- 
facturing establishment ; and the Factory Inspector, 
Assistant Factory Inspector, and Deputy Factory In- 
spectors, under the direction of the Factory Inspector, 
shall notify the owner, agent, or lessee, in writing, to 
provide, or cause to be provided, ample and proper 
means of ventilating such workroom, and shall prose- 
cute such owner, agent, or lessee, if such notification 
be not complied with within twenty days of the ser- 
vice of such notice. 

§ 15. Upon the expiration of the term of office of 
the present Factory Inspector, and upon the expira- 
tion of the term qf office of each of his successors, 
the Governor shall, by and with the advice and con- 
sent of the Senate, appoint a Factory Inspector ; and 
upon the expiration of the term of office of the 
present Assistant Factory Inspector, and upon the 
expiration of the term of office of each of his suc- 
cessors, the Governor shall, by and with the advice 
and consent of the Senate, appoint an Assistant 
Factory Inspector. Each Factory Inspector and 
Assistant Factory Inspector shall hold over and con- 
tinue in office, after the expiration of his term of 
office, until his successor shall be appointed and 
qualified. The Factory Inspector is hereby author- 



288 Appendix. 

ized to appoint from time to time not exceeding 
sixteen persons to be Deputy Factory Inspectors, not 
more than eight of whom shall be women ; and he 
shall have power to remove the same at any time. 
The term of office of the Factory Inspector and of 
the Assistant Factory Inspector shall be three years 
each. Annual salaries shall be paid in equal monthly 
instalments, as follows : To the Factory Inspector, three 
thousand dollars ; to the Assistant Factory Inspector, 
two thousand five hundred dollars ; to each Deputy 
Factory Inspector, one thousand two hundred dollars. 
All necessary travelling and other expenses incurred 
by the Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, 
and the Deputy Factory Inspectors in the discharge 
of their duties shall be paid monthly by the Treasurer 
upon the warrant of the Comptroller, issued upon 
proper vouchers therefor. A sub-office may be 
opened ^in the city of New York at an expense of 
not more than one thousand five hundred dollars a 
year. The reasonable necessary travelling and other 
expenses of the Deputy Factory Inspectors while 
engaged in the performance of their duties shall be 
paid upon vouchers approved by the Factory Inspector 
and audited by the Comptroller. 

§ 1 6. It shall be the duty of the Factory In- 
spector, and the Assistant Factory Inspector, and 
of each of the Deputy Factory Inspectors under 
the supervision and direction of the Factory Inspector, 
to cause this act to be enforced, and to cause all 



Appendix. 289 

violators of this act to be prosecuted ; and for that 
purpose they and each of them are hereby empowered 
to visit and inspect at all reasonable hours, and as 
often as shall be practicable and necessary, all manu- 
facturing establishments in this State. It shall be 
unlawful for any person to interfere with, obstruct, or 
hinder, by force or otherwise, any officer appointed to 
enforce the provisions of this act, while in the* per- 
formance of his or her duties, or to refuse to properly 
answer questions asked by such officer with reference 
to any of the provisions hereof. The Factory Inspector 
may divide the State into , districts, and assign one or 
more Deputy Factory Inspectors to each district, and 
transfer them from one district to another as the best 
interests of the State may, in his judgment, require. 
Any Deputy Factory Inspector may be appointed to 
act as Clerk in the main office of the Factory Inspector, 
which shall be furnished in the Capitol, and set apart 
for the use of the Factory Inspector. The Assistant 
Factory Inspector and Deputy Factory Inspectors 
shall make reports to the Factory Inspector from 
time to time, as may be required by the Factory In- 
spector, and the Factory Inspector shall make an 
annual report to the Legislature during the month of 
January of each year. The Factory Inspector, As- 
sistant Factory Inspector, and each Deputy Factory 
Inspector shall have the same powers as a Notary 
Public to administer oaths and take affidavits in mat- 
ters connected with the enforcement of the provisions 
of this act. 



290 Appendix. 

§ 17. The District Attorney of any county of this 
State is hereby authorized, upon the request of the 
Factory Inspector, Assistant Factory Inspector, or of 
a Deputy Factory Inspector, or of any other person 
of full age, to commence and prosecute to termina- 
tion before any Recorder, PoHce Justice, or court of 
record, in the name of the people of the State, actions 
or proceedings against any person or persons reported 
to him to have violated the provisions of this act. 

§ 18. The words "manufacturing establishment," 
wherever used in this act, shall be construed to mean 
any mill, factory, or workshop, where one or more 
persons are employed at labor. 

§ 19, A copy of this act shall be conspicuously 
posted and kept posted in each workroom of every 
manufacturing establishment in this State. 

§ 20. Any person who violates or omits to comply 
with any of the provisions of this act, or who suffers 
or permits any child to be employed in violation of its 
provisions, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, 
and on conviction shall be punished by a fine of not 
less than twenty nor more than fifty dollars for the 
first offence, and not more than one hundred dollars 
for the second offence, or imprisonment for not more 
than ten days, and for the third offence a fine of not 
less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and not more 
than thirty days' imprisonment. 

§ 21. All acts and parts of acts inconsistent with 
the provisions of this act are hereby repealed. 

§ 22. This act shall take effect immediately. 



AUTHORITIES CONSULTED IN PREPARING 
THIS BOOK. 



United States Census, from 1790 to 1880 inclusive. 
Reports of the State Bureaus of Labor Statistics as 
follows : — 

Maine, 1889. 

Massachusetts, 1870 to 1889 inclusive. 

Connecticut, 1881. 

Rhode Island, 1889. 

New York, 1885. 

New Jersey, 1885, 1886, and 1889. 

Iowa, 1887 and 1889. 

Kansas, 1889. 

Wisconsin, 1883-84 and 1887. 

Colorado, 1889. 

Minnesota, 1889. 

California, 1888. 

Nebraska, 1887-90. 

Michigan, 1892. 
Reports of the Factory Inspectors for various States. 
Working Women in Large Cities : Report of the United 
States Department of Labor, Washington, D. C, 1889. 
The Labor Movement in America. By Richard T. Ely. 

Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York. 
The Wages Question: A Treatise on Wages and the 
Wages Class. By Francis A. Walker. Henry Holt 
& Co., New York. 



292 Authorities, 

The Labor Problem. Edited by W. E. Barnes. Harper 

& Brothers, New York. 
On Labor. By W. T. Thornton. Macmillan & Co., 

London, 1869. 
Profit-Sharing between Employer and Employed. By N. 

P. Gilman. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., Boston. 
Sharing the Profits. By Mary Whiton Calkins, A. M. 

Ginn & Co., Boston. 
Artisans and Machinery. ByP. Gaskell. London, 1836. 
Condition of the Laboring Classes in England. By F. 

Engel. Leipzig and New York. 
Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft aus dem geschicht. 

Standpunkte. By Wilhelm Roscher. 
Various Reports of Commissioners appointed to inquire 

into the working of the Factory Acts in England. 
Le Travail des Femmes au XIX. Siecle. By Paul Leroy- 

Beaulieu. Paris, 1870. 
London Labor and the London Poor. By Henry May- 
hew. Charles Griffen & Co., London. 
The Industrial Revolution. By Arnold Toynbee. London. 
The Philosophy of Wealth. By John B. Clark. Ginn 

& Co., Boston. 
Economic Writings of Emil de Lavelaye. 
Lalor's Cyclopedia of Political Science. 
Various Treatises on Pohtical Economy. Adam Smith, 

John Stuart Mill, Senior, Cairnes, Ely, Perry, 

Walker, etc. 
Prisoners of Poverty. By Helen Campbell. Roberts 

Bros., Boston. 
Applied Christianity. By Washington Gladden. Hough- 
ton, Mifflin, & Co., Boston. 
Life and Work of the Earl of Shaftesbury, London. 

Read for Factory Inspection and Legislation. 



Authorities. 



293 



\ 



Problems of To-Day. By Richard T. Ely. T. Y. Crowell 

& Co., New York. 
Social Studies. By the Rev. R. Heber Newton. G. P. 

Putnam's Son, New York. 
Social Problems. By Henry George. 
Studies in Modern Socialism. By Edwin Brown, D.D. 

Appleton & Co., New York. 
Dynamic Sociology. By Lester F. Ward. D. Appleton 

& Co., New York. 
Labor and Life of the People. Vols, i & 2 : East London. 

By Charles Booth. Williams & Norgate, London, 

1889 & 1892. 
Thirty Years of Labor: 1859 to 1889. By T. V. Pow- 

derly. 
Das Kapital. By Karl Marx. 
How the Other Half Live. By Jacob Riis. Charles 

Scribner's Sons, New York. 
General Reports and Review Articles on the questions 

involved. 



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Wahrend des Druckes erschienen : 
Ed. von Hartmann, Die Jungfernfrage, Gegenwart 1891, 

Nr. 34 und 35. 
W. Stieda, Frauenarbeit. Jahrb. f. Nat., Dritte Folge, 

II, 2, 1 89 1. 

Bibliography of French Literature on the Woman 
Question and that of Woman's Labor. 

Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrieres depuis 1788. 
Paris, 1867. 

Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Le travail des femmes au XIX. 
siecle. Paris, 1873. 

Jules Simon, L'ouvriere, 2"^^ Edition. Paris, 1870. 

Villerm^, Tableau de I'etat physique et moral des ouvriers 
employes dans les manufactures de coton, de laine et 
de sole. Paris, 1840. 

Kuborn, Rapport sur I'enquete faite au nom de Pacademie 
royale de medicine de Belgique par la commission 
chargee d'etudier la question de I'emploi des femmes 
dans les travaux souterrains des mines. Bruxelles, 
1868. Documents nouveaux relatifs au travail des 
femmes et des enfants dans les manufactures, les 
mines, etc., etc. Bruxelles, 1874. 

Condorcet, Lettres d'un bourgeois de New Haven a un 
citoyen de Virginie, 1787. GEuvres completes, Bruns- 
wick, 1804. The same, Sur I'admission des femmes 
au droit de cite. Journal de la societe de 1789, v. 3, 
VIL 1790. 

Laboulaye, Recherches sur la condition civile et politique 



302 Bibliography, 

des femmes depuis les Romains jusqu'k nos jours. 

Paris, 1843. 
Legouve, Histoire morale de la femme. Paris, 1848 ; 4""^ 

edition, 1884. 
Micbelet, La femme. Paris, i860. 
Proudhon, La justice dans F^glise et dans la revolution, 

1858. CEuvres anciennes, Paris, 1868-76. Tome 

22-26. 
Jenny d'Hericourt, La femme affranchie. Bruxelles, 

i860. 
Juliette Lamber, Id^es antiproudhoniennes sur Pamour, 

la femme et le mariage, 2™^ Edition. Paris, 1862. 
Leon Giraud, Essai sur la condition de la femme en 

Europe et en Am^rique. Paris, 1883. 
Eugene Pelletan, La famille. La mere. Paris, 1865. 
Actes du Congres international des droits des femmes. 

Paris, 1878. 
Comte de Franqueville, Les droits des femmes en Angle- 

terre, Compte rendu de I'Acad^mie des sciences 

morales et politiques. Paris, 1891. 

English Bibliography. 

Working Women in Large Cities, 4th annual Report of 

the Commission of Labor. Washington, 1878. 
Theodore Stanton, The Woman Question in Europe. 

London, 1884. 
Helen Campbell, Prisoners of Poverty, 1887. Prisoners 

of Poverty Abroad, 1889. 
Woman's Work in America, edited by Annie Nathan 

Meyer. New York, 1891. 
Sophia Jex-Blake, Medical Women. Edinburgh, 1871. 
A. Huntley, Women and Medicine. London, 1886. 



Bibliography. 303 

-John Stuart Mill, Subjection of Women. London, 1869. 
Eliza W. Farnham, Woman and her Era. New York, 

1869. 
Lester F. Ward, Dynamic Sociology, vol. i. pp. 597-664. 
Maria S. Child, History and Condition of Women in 

various Ages and Nations. Boston, 1840. 



INDEX. 



Abuses, in factories, 112; in dry- 
goods stores, 365. {See also 
Fines, Factories, Hours.) 

Age, average, of working-women 
in Massachusetts, 116. 

Agricultural labor, women press 
into, 21. 

Agricultural Laborers' Union, 
women denied admission to, 21. 

Alabama, women workers in, no. 

Alfred's " History of the Factory 
Movement," 93. 

American girls, percentage of, 
employed in Massachusetts, 116. 

Andover ordinances, 60. 

Appendix, 275. 

Apprentices, 49, 122. 

Arbitration, 266. 

Aristotle, " Politics " and " Econo- 
mics," 29 ; views of women, 30.. 

Arizona, working-women in, no. 

Arkansas, working-women in, no. 

Atlanta, Ga., weekly wage in, 

139- 
Austria, hours of labor in, 185. 
Authorities consulted, 291. 



Bakeries, gh-lsin, 218. 
Baltimore, Md., weekly wage in, 

139- 
Beating, 52. 
Beaulieu, Paul Leroy, 165, 167, 

251. 



Belgium, inquiry commission, 
174 ; hours of labor in, 186. 

Berlin Labor Conference, 11. 

Betton, Frank, investigation of 
conditions in Kansas, 123. 

Bibhography, 294. 

Bishop, Commissioner, 221. 

'' Bitter Cry of Outcast London," 

9» 136- 
Blackwell, Dr. Emily, on restraints 

on women workers, 97. 
Book-binding, women and children 

employed in, 108. 
Boston, weekly wage in, 139; 

establishment of labor bureau in, 

in; report on working-girls of, 

114; women employed in, 116. 
Brain, relative sizes and weights 

of man's and woman's, 27. 
Brassey, Lord, 176. 
Broadcloth, weaving of, by women, 

73- 
Brooklyn, N. Y., weekly wage in, 

139- 
Bucher, Dr. Carl, 43. 
Buffalo, N. Y., weekly wage in, 

139- 

California, average wage in, 
141; women workers in, no; 
first labor-bureau report, 121. 

Calkins, Mary W., on profit-shar- 
ing, 267. 



.^o6 



Index. 



Capital has no complaint, 7, ii. 
Capitalist, and landlord absorb 

lion's share, 7 ; investment of 

skill and risk, 12. 
Carpet-weaving, women employed 

in, 108. 
Celibacy, 43. 
Census Bureau, difficulties in 

work of, 102; discrepancies in 

reports, 103. 
Charity adds insult to injury, 251. 
Charlemagne, 45. 
Charleston, S. C, weekly wage 

in, 139. 
Chicago, weekly wage in, 139. 
Child labor, efforts against, 11; in 

Prussia, 175, 178. 
Chivalry, 44. 
Cigar-making, women and children 

employed in, 108. 
Cincinnati, weekly wage in, 139, 
Cities, women's trades focussed in, 

19. 
Clement of Alexandria, on women, 

41. 
Cleveland, O., weekly wage in, 

139- 

Clothing-trade, women employed 
in, 108, 

Colbert, 54, 

Colorado, women workers in, no; 
labor-bureau reports, 122 ; weekly 
wage in, 141. 

Commodity, labor as a, 17. 

Competition, among needle-work- 
ers, 22; should be controlled, 
252, 253. 

Conciliation, arbitration and, 266. 

Conditions, general, in Maine, 
189; Massachusetts, 190; Con- 
necticut, 192 ; Rhode Island, 
193; New Jersey, 197; Kansas, 
199 j Wisconsin, 199 ; Colorado, 



200; Indiana, 200; Minnesota, 
201 ; California, 202 ; Missouri, 
204 ; Michigan, 205 ; in New 
York stores, 232. 

Congres Feministe, 165. 

Connecticut, women workers in, 
no; labor bureau organized, 
121 ; average wage, 141. 

Cotton, first bale of, 6"] ; industry, 
68; in Italy, 179; machmery 
and mills, 70, 71. 

Cotton-goods trade, women in, 108. 

Coxe, Tench, 68, 72, 115. 

Credit, 54. 

Crime and pauperism in labor 
reports, 113. 

Criminal list fed by factory sys- 
tem, 91. 

Custom hampers women workers, 
22. 

Cyprian, 41, 



Dakota, working-women in, no. 

Daniel, Dr. Annie S., 223, 225, 
226. 

Deaconesses, 39. 

De Gournay, 54. 

Delaware, women workers in, no. 

Diet, effect on industrial efficiency, 
14= 

Distribution of wealth, conflict 
over, ']^%. 

District of Columbia, working- 
women in, no. 

Divorces in Massachusetts labor 
reports, 114. 

Domestic service, 57, 237; in 
California, 122 ; in Colorado, 
122 ; advantages of, 239 ; disad- 
vantages, 241 ; employers of, 
245 ; Woman's Congress on, 246. 

Donaldson, Principal, 39^ 



Index. 



Z01 



Dress -making, 254. 

Drimakos, 34. 

Dry-goods houses, abuses in, 265. 

Dust in modern manufacture, 213, 

218, 219. 
Dynamic Sociology, 26. 



Earnings, definition of, 127 ; 
average of working-women in 
Massachusetts, 117. 

Economic question, the question 
of the day, 7 ; dependence, 27 ; 
Greek thought, 29. 

Education, technical, as affecting 
efficiency, 14 ; of girls less prac- 
tical than of boys, 22 ; industrial, 
in Italy, 175 ; in Sweden, 183; 
compulsory, 178 ; demanded for 
the employer and the public, 
251. 

Efficiency, differences in, regulate 
wages, 14 ; affected by educa • 
tion, 14. 

Embroidery, 48. 

Emerson, Mary Moody, 66. 

Emigration, Irish, 84 ; increase of, 

96. 

Employment, fluctuation in, affects 
wages, 16. 

Encyclical of Pope Leo XIIL, 
151. 

Engels, Dr., on proportion of sub- 
sistence to total expenses, 118. 

Evils recognized, 94. 

Evolution, woman's industrial 
activity in harmony with, 270. 

Expenses, average of working- 
women in Massachusetts, 118. 

Factory, system, 75, 90; girls, 
78; Lowell girls, 79; laws, 81, 



^5i 235, 275 ; conditions, 82, 
84 ; hours, 86 ; women in, 89 ; 
employments, effects of, 91 ; ven- 
tilation, 92 ; inspection, 222, 
275 ; married women in, 229; 
movement, 92, 93. 

Fair house, standard of, 262. 

Families, condition of, 113. 

Family life, demoralization of, 
271. 

Fawcett, Henry, opposition to 
women in trades, 20. 

Fines, system of, 230, 233 ; in 
stores, 258. 

Florida, women workers in, no. 

Fortescue, 53. 

France, hours of labor in, 183. 

Fry, Eleanor, 63. 

Fuller, Margaret, 119. 

Furriers, 46. 

Georgia, women workers in, no. 

Germany, attitude of Emperor 

William, 11 ; hours of labor in, 

.85. 

" Germinal," 174. 

Gilman, N. P., on profit-sharing, 
267. 

Gloves, home manufacture of, 63. 

Godfrey's Cordial in infant mor- 
tality, 147. 

Greeley, Horace, 119. 

Guilds, 45 ; expulsion of women 
from, 47. 

Habits, personal, as affecting 

efficiency, 14. 
Half-time system for children, 

113- 

Harkness, Margaret, 154. 
Harland, Sarah, on work for un- 
educated women, 253. 



3o8 



Index. 



Harrison, Frederick, 17, 18. 
Health, in factory employments, 

91; of working-women in Massa- 
chusetts, 113. 
Homes, of working-people, 112 ; 

for girls/ 191 ; in cities, 222, 226, 

250. 
Hosiery and knitting, women 

employed in, 108. 
Hours of labor, in Massachusetts, 

117 ; in Michigan, 206 ; in stores, 

258. 
Huxley, Thomas, description of 

London parish, 9, 10. 



Idaho, working-women in, no. 
Ideals, alteration of, called for, 

271. 
Illinois, women workers in, no. 
Immobility of labor, 18, 19. 
Income, defined, 127 ; average, in 

Massachusetts, 116 = 
Indiana, women workers in, no. 
Indianapolis, average wage in, 

139- 
Individual development, 272. 
Industrial, education, 252 ; effi- 
ciency, 14- 
Industries open to women in the 

United States, 124. 
Infant mortality, 147. 
Insanity among workers, 254. 
Intellectual degeneracy of factory 

operatives, 91, 93, 
Intelligence, effect on efficiency, 

14; effect of factory system 

on, 91. 
Intemperance produced by factory 

system, 91. 
Iowa, women workers in, no; 

labor bureau, 122. 
*' Iphigenia in Tauris," 31. 



Irish, emigration, 84 ; industries, 

159. 
Iron law of wages, defined and 

denounced, 15 ; applicable to 

unskilled labor, 15. 



Jevons, W. S., 147- 
Justice, education in, 271 ; a soul- 
growth, 273, 274. 



Kansas, women workers in, no; 

labor bureau, 122 ; average wage 

in, 89, 
Kay, Dr., 89. 
Kelley, Florence, 264. 
Kettle, Rupert, on arbitration, 

268. 
Knights of Labor, on women's 

work, 270. 
Knitting, 74 ; and hosiery trades, 

women in, 108. 



Labor, degradation of, 35 ; 
unskilled in colonies, 58 ; child, 
86 ; effect of out-door, on preg- 
nant mothers, 147 ; unskilled, a 
cause of low wages, 271 ; bureaus, 
their work in relation to women, 
no {see also under each 
State) ; Father of, 115 ; mobility 
of, 17; Congress in Belgium, 
175 ; hours of, in Germany, 185, 
in France, 183, in Austria, 185, 
in Belgium, 186, in Switzerland, 
186. 

Laborer does not receive his 
share, 13. 

Lace-making, women employed in, 
48, 108; in Ireland, 159; in 
Nottingham, 268. 



Index. 



309 



Lecky, W. H., 89. 
Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, 165, 167, 

251. 
Levasseiir, E., 161. 
Lille, cave-dwellers in, 168. 
"London, Bitter Cry of Outcast," 

9, 196; poverty, 9, 10, 
Louis le Jeune, 46. 
Louis, Saint, " Institutions " of, 

46 
Louisiana, women workers in,- 

no. 
Louisville, Ky., weekly wage in, 

139- 

Love, law of, ends conflict, 274, 

Lowell factory -girl, 93. 

Lowell, Josephine Shaw, 267. 

Luther, 44. 

Lynn, Mass., shoe-making indus- 
try of, 99. 



Machinery, effects on woman's 
labor, 252. 

Maine, Sir Henry, 42. 

Maine, women employed in, no; 
in shoe-making, 99 ; labor 
bureau, 123; average wages, 

139. 
Manual training, in California, 122. 

(6"^^ also education.) 
Marriage, 27, 38. 
Married women in factories, 91, 

118. 
Massachusetts, Bureau of Labor 

reports, 99, loi, in ; census of 

women workers in, no, 116; 

average wages in, 139. 
Match-ma'l^ng dangers, 221. 
Mazzini on freedom, 273. 
Men oppose admission of women 

to trades, 20. 



Men's furnishing-goods, women 

employed in, 108, 
Michigan, women workers in, 

no. 
Millinery, women employed m, 

108 ; readily organized trade, 

254. 
Mines, women in, 174. 
Minnesota, women employed in. 

no ; labor bureau, 122 ; average 

wage, 141. 
Mississippi, working-women in, 

no. 
Missouri, women workers in, no. 
Mobility of labor, 17. 
Modern processes involve risk, 

n5. 
Montana, working-women in, no. 
Mundella, Arthur, on arbitration, 



Nebraska, working-women in, 

no. 
Needle, resource of unskilled 

woman laborers, 22. 
Nevada, women workers in, no. 
Newark, average wage in, 139. 
New England, shoe operatives in, 

100. 
New Hampshire, women in shoe- 
making industry in, 99 ; total 

women workers, no. 
New Jersey, factory evils in, 94; 

w^omen workers employed, iio \ 

average wage, 141. 
New Mexico, working-women in, 

no. 
New Orleans, average wages in, 

139- 
New York, Labor Bureau reports, 
94, 119 ; factory evils, 94; total 



310 



Index. 



women workers in State, no; 
a\erage wage in, 141. 

New York City, average wage in, 
139 ; percentage of women 
workers in, 109; '' Tribune " 
stirs in sewing-women's behalf, 
IT9. 

North Carohna, total women em- 
ployed in, no. 

Nott, Mrs., 66. 

Nottingham lace manufacture, 
268. 



Offices, intelligence, 247. 
Ohio, women employed in, no. 
Oregon, working-women in, no. 
Organization among women, in 

France, 166; in cities, 206; in 

England, 253, 255. 



Parent-Duchalet, 171. 

Pauerism and crime in labor re- 
ports, 113. 

Pay, just, the first remedy, 25 ; 
equal for both sexes, 257. 

Peck, Charles F., work in New 
York, 119. 

Pennsylvania, working-women in, 
no. 

Perkins, Mrs. Thomas, 65. 

Philadelphia, average weekly wage 
in, 139. 

Plato, 35. 

Post-office, employment of women 
in, objected to, 21. 

Potter, Beatrice, 154. 

Poverty, no more desperate in 
Europe than in the United 
States, 9 , in London, 9,10; pro- 
duced by factory system, 91. 



Prejudice, born of ignorance, etc., 

to be dismissed, 13. 
Profit-sharing between employer 

and employed, 267. 
Prostitution, fed by factory system, 

91, 92 i by domestic service, 

93; statistics in, 171, 210; 

recruited from factories, 114. 
Providence, average weekly wage 

in, 139. 

OUESNAY, 54. 

Question of the day, the economic 

one, 7. 
Questions, three, to be answered 

13- 

Ranke, on air required, 92. 
Remedies, just pay the first, 251. 
Reports, labor, six divisions of, 

115. {See also under various 

States.) 
Reybaud's " History of the Factory 

Movement," 92. 
Rhode Island, working-women in, 

no ; average wage in, 141. 
Rice, Commissioner, deals with 

women wage-earners in Colorado 

report, 122, 123. 
Richmond, Va., average weekly 

wage in, 139. 
Robinson, Henry A., Michigan 

Labor Bureau work, 123. 
Robinson, Mrs. H. H., 79. 
Rogers, Thorold, 55 ; value of his 

work, 15, 16. 



Saleswomen, 131. 
San Francisco, average weekly 
wage in, 139. 



Index. 



311 



Sanitary conditions of factories 

and of operatives' homes, 92. 
San Jose, average weekly wage in, 

139- 
Savannah, average weekly wage 

in, 139. 
Savings of Massachusetts work- 
ing-women, 118. 
Seamstresses, in Paris, 163 ; in 

New York, 163. 
Seats in shops, 220. 
Sewmg-women, feelmg stirred in 

behalf of, 119. 
Sex, disability of, in the way of 

mobihty of labor, 18- 
" Sharing the Profits," by Mary 

W. Calkins, 267. 
Shearman, T. G., on irregularity 

of conditions in the United 

States, 8. 
Shirt-making, women in, 108. 
Shoe-making, women in, 98, 99. 
Silk-growmg, 64, 65. 
Silk industry, women and children 

in, 95, 108. 
Silk manufactory, women and 

children in, in Italy, 179. 
Simon, Jules, 163. 
Single and married, proportion of, 

among working-women, 118. 
Smith, Adam, 54 ; summary of 

causes for difference in wages, 

16. 
Social life of working-people, 114. 
Society, women workers frowned 

on by, 97- 
Solidarity of humanity, 274. 
Soul-moulding, Mazzini on, 273. 
South Carolina, working-women in, 

no. 
Spinning-classes, 60 ; patriotic, d'}^. 
Statistics inadequate as to early 

conditions, 75. 



Stevens, Dr., on increase of 

insanity, 254. 
Stores, condition of women and 

children in, 258. 
St. Louis, average weekly wage in, 

139- 
St. Paul, average weekly wage in, 

139. 

Straw-braiding in New England, 
68, 100, loi; straw-goods trade, 
women in, 108. 

Sully, 53. 

Supply and demand, 23. 

Sweating-system, 150, 235 ; parlia- 
mentary investigation of, end of 
report on, 153. 

Tacitus, '}^Z. 

Technical education, as affecting 

efficiency, 14. 
Tenement-house manufacture, 256. 
Tennessee, working-women in, no. 
Tertullian, 40. 

Texas, working-women in, no. 
Textile industries, women in, 98. 
Thucydides, opinion of, 32. 
Tobacco trade, women in, no. 
Trades, admission of women to, 

barred by men, 20 ; women 

employed in, 108. 
Tramp question, in labor reports, 

113- 
Trusts, alarm caused by growth of, 

II. 
Turgot, 54. 
Tutelage, perpetual, of women, 36. 

Umbrellas and canes, women 
employed in, 108. 

Unemployed, condition of, 113. 

Union, Working-Women's Pro- 
tective, 230. 



312 



Index. 



United States, Labor Bureau 
Reports on working - women, 
124. 

Unskilled labor, in majority, 22 ; 
fierce competition in, 22 ; sur- 
plus of, following Civil \Var, 

lOI. 

Utah, working-women in, no. 



Vacations of working-women in 
Massachusetts, 117. 

Value of laborer's service to 
employer, elements of, 14. 

Vapors, dangers of, in manufacture, 
214. 

Vegetables, cultivation of, by wo- 
men, 263. 

Vermont, working-women in, no. 

Vincent, Madame, 165. 

Villerme, 169, 176. 



Wage rates, present, in United 
States, 126. 

Wages, why men receive more 
than women, 14, 21 ; effect of 
industrial efficiency on, 14 ; iron 
law of, 1 5 ; effort to make stand- 
ard of life conform to, 15 ; 
tendency to a minimum, 16; 
Adam Smith for causes of dif- 
ference in, 16; in stores, 259; 
final effect of woman's work on, 
270 ; not fixed, 35 ; field, 58 ; 
eighteenth-century, 62 ; in 
France, 161 , in Russia, 181 ; 
New York, 129; decrease in, 
226 ; in clothing, 130 ; in Con- 
necticut, 133; in Italy, 181; in 
California, 134; Colorado, 135; 
Iowa, 136 ; Kansas, 136; Maine, 
134; Minnesota, 135 ; Michigan, 



138 ; Rhode Island, 134 ; aver- 
age, per State, 141 ; average, 
for all cities, 141; average, by 
cities, 139; definition of, 127. 

Wages question the question of 
the day, 7. 

Wales, women in industries in, 
160. 

Walker J Gen. F. A., on differences 
in efficiency, 14 ; difficulties of 
census enumeration, 104, 

Ward, Lester F., 26. 

Wealth, ratio of increase greater 
than that of population, 8; 
greater aggregation of, in the 
United States than in Great 
Britain, 9. 

Weavers of Baltimore, 81. 

Weavmg, colonial, 60. 

West Virginia, working-women in, 
no. 

Widows, proportion of, among 
other workers, 118. 

Windows, naihng down of, 62. 

Wisconsin, average wage in. 141 ; 
working-women in, no. 

Wives' earnings, 113. 

Woman, primeval, 27 ; Roman, 
36 ; property of, 52 ; petition of, in 
France, 55 j International Coun- 
cil of, 79. 

Women-workers, percentage of, in 
Philadelphia, Pittsburg, New 
York, Lowell, Manchester, Wil- 
mington, Del., 108, 109; accord- 
ing to States, no; of Boston, 
114, 116; industries open to, in 
large cities, 124 ; development 
of her intelligence necessary, 
251 ; in German mines, n ; 
why their wages are less than 
men's, 14 ; their trades highly 
localized, 19 ; entrance into 



\^ 



^o.» 



Index. 



313 



trades barred by men, 20 ; 
increase of, in the United States, 
98; total numbers of, in the 
United States, in i860, 103, in 
1870, 105, in 1880, 105 ; occu- 
pations according to Census of 
1880,106. 

Woollen and cotton industries, 98, 
108. 

Working-girls' clubs, conditions 
of, 257. 



Working- Woman's Journal, 255. 
Working - Women's Protective 

Union, 255. 
Working-Women's Society of 

New York, its aims, 256. 
Worsted and woollen trades, 

women and children in, 108. 
Wright, Carroll D., 115. 
Wyoming, working - women in, 

no. 








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